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SEX  ^  CHARACTER 


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SEX  &•  CHARACTER 


SEX 

AND 

CHARACTER 

By  Otto  Weininger 

Authorised  Translation 
FROM  THE  Sixth  German  Edition 


A.  L.  BURT  COMPANY,  Publishers 
New  York  Chicago 

rUBLISBED  BY  ARRANGEMENT  WITH  C.   P.  rUTNAlt't  lOMt 
rRINTED  IN  V.  S.  A. 


Made  in  the  United  States  of  America 


NOTE  TO  THE  SIXTH  GERMAN  EDITION 
(By  the  German  Publisher) 

There  are  few  instances  in  the  history  of  literature  in  which 
a  work  so  mature  in  its  scientific  purpose  and  so  original  in  its 
philosophic  aspect  as  "  Sex  and  Character  "  has  been  produced 
by  a  student  who  was  at  the  time  of  its  completion  less  than 
thirty  years  of  age.  "  Sex  and  Character  "  was  at  once  accepted 
by  scientific  authorities,  who  had  direct  knowledge  of  its  sub- 
ject matter,  as  a  book  that  demanded  respectful  consideration, 
whether  or  not  its  conclusions  might  be  accepted.  It  may  at 
once  be  admitted  that  the  book  is  by  no  means  in  harmony  with 
contemporary  thought.  If  the  conclusions  of  Weininger  should 
be  accepted,  discu^^sions  concerning  the  emancipation  of  women, 
the  relation  of  women  to  culture,  and  the  results  of  sexuality 
would  be  deprived  of  their  foundation.  In  this  treatise,  we 
have  presented,  with  all  the  penetrating  acumen  of  the  trained 
logician,  a  characterisation  of  sexual  types,  "  M  "  (the  ideal 
man),  and  "  W  "  (the  ideal  woman).  The  psychological  phe- 
nomena are  traced  back  to  a  final  source  and  the  author  under- 
takes to  present  what  he  believes  to  be  a  definitive  solution 
altogether  alien  to  the  field  of  inquiry  wherein  the  answer  has 
hitherto  been  sought. 

In  the  science  of  characterology,  here  formuliited  for  the 
first  time,  we  have  a  strenuous  scientific  achievement  of  the 
first  importance.  All  former  psychologies  have  been  the  psy- 
chology of  the  male,  written  by  men,  and  more  or  less 
consciously  applicable  only  to  man  as  distinguished  from 
humanity.  "  Woman  does  not  betray  her  secret,"  said  Kant, 
and  this  has  been  true  till  now.  But  now  she  has  revealed  it 
— ^by  the  voice  of  a  man.  The  things  women  say  about  them- 
selves have  been  suggested  by  men ;  they  repeat  the  discoveries, 
more  or  less  real,  which  men  have  made  about  them.     By  a 


VI  PUBLISHER'S  NOTE 

highly  original  method  of  analysis,  a  man  has  succeeded  for 
the  first  time  in  giving  scientific  and  abstract  utterance  to  that 
which  only  some  few  great  artists  have  suggested  by  concrete 
images  hitherto.  Weininger,  working  out  an  original  system 
of  characterology  (psychological  typology)  rich  in  prospective 
possibilities,  undertook  the  construction  of  a  universal  psy- 
chology of  woman  which  penetrates  to  the  nethermost  depths, 
and  is  based  not  only  on  a  vast  systematic  mastery  of  scientific 
knowledge,  but  on  what  can  only  be  described  as  an  appalling 
comprehension  of  the  feminine  soul  in  its  most  secret  recesses. 
This  newly  created  method  embraces  the  whole  domain  of 
human  consciousness ;  research  must  be  carried  out  on  the  lines 
laid  down  by  Nature — in  three  stages,  and  from  three  distinct 
points  of  view :  the  biologico-physiological,  the  psychologically 
descriptive,  and  the  philosophically  appreciative.  I  will  not 
dwell  here  on  the  equipment  essential  for  such  a  task,  the  neces- 
sary combination  of  a  comprehensive  knowledge  of  natural 
history  with  a  minute  and  exhaustive  mastery  of  psychological 
and  philosophical  science — a  combination  destined,  perhaps,  to 
prove  unique. 

The  general  characterisation  of  the  ideal  woman,  "  W,"  is 
followed  by  the  construction  of  individual  types,  which  are 
finally  resolved  into  two  elemental  figures  (Platonic  concep- 
tions to  some  extent),  the  Courtesan  and  the  Mother.  These 
are  differentiated  by  their  pre-occupation  with  the  sexual  act 
(the  main,  and  ir^the  ultimate  sense,  sole  interest  of  "  W"), 
in  the  first  case,  as  an  end  in  itself,  in  the  second  as  the  process 
which  results  in  the  possession  of  a  child.  The  abnormal  type, 
the  hysterical  woman,  leads  up  to  a  psychological  (not  physio- 
logical) theory  of  hysteria,  which  is  acutely  and  convincingly 
defined  as  "  the  organic  mendacity  of  woman." 

Weininger  himself  attached  the  highest  importance  to  the 
ethico-philosophical  chapters  that  conclude  his  work,  in  which 
he  passes  from  the  special  problem  of  sexuality  to  the  problems 
of  individual  talent,  genius,  aesthetics,  memory,  the  ego,  the 
Jewish  race,  and  many  others,  nsing  finally  to  the  ultimate 
logical  and  moral  principles  of  judgment.  From  his  most 
universal  standpoint  he  succeeds  in  estimating  woman  as  a  part 
of  humanity,  and,  above  all,  subjectively.    Here  he  deliberately 


PUBLISHER'S  NOTE  vü 

comes  into  sharp  conflict  with  the  fashionable  tendencies 
towards  an  unscientific  monism  and  its  accompanying  phe- 
nomena, pan-sexuality  and  the  ethics  of  species,  and  charac- 
terises very  aptly  the  customary  superficialities  of  the  many 
non-philosophical  modern  apostles,  of  whom  Wilhelm  Bölsche 
and  Ellen  Key  are  perhaps  the  most  representative  types. 
Weininger,  in  defiance  of  all  reigning  fashions,  represents  a 
consolidated  dualism,  closely  related  to  the  eternal  systems  of 
Plato,  of  Christianity,  and  of  Kant,  which  finds  an  original 
issue  in  a  bitterly  tragic  conception  of  the  universe.  Richard 
Wagner  gives  artistic  expression  in  his  Parsifal  to  the  con- 
ception Weininger  sets  forth  scientifically.  It  is,  in  fact, 
the  old  doctrine  of  the  divine  life  and  of  redemption  to  which 
the  whole  book,  with  its  array  of  detail,  is  consecrated.  In 
Kundry,  Weininger  recognises  the  most  profound  conception 
of  woman  in  all  literature.  In  her  redemption  by  the  spotless 
Parsifal,  the  young  philosopher  sees  the  way  of  mankind 
marked  out;  he  contrasts  with  this  the  programme  of  the 
modern  feminist  movement,  with  its  superficialities  and  its  lies ; 
and  so,  in  conclusion,  the  book  returns  to  the  problem,  which, 
in  spite  of  all  its  wealth  of  thought,  remains  its  governing  idea : 
the  problem  of  the  sexes  and  the  possibility  of  a  moral  relation 
between  them — a  moral  relation  fundamentally  different  from 
what  is  commonly  understood  by  the  term,  of  course.  In  this 
volume  is  revealed  the  mind  of  one  who  was,  it  may  be  believed, 
a  conscientious  student,  and  to  whom  life  brought  only  unhap- 
piness  and  tragedy.  No  thoughtful  man  can  lay  down  the  book 
without  being  impressed  by  the  earnestness  and  the  honesty 
of  the  author's  investigations. 


AUTHOR'S    PREFACE 

This  book  is  an  attempt  to  place  the  relations  of  Sex  in  a 
new  and  decisive  light.  It  is  an  attempt  not  to  collect  the 
greatest  possible  number  of  distinguishing  characters,  or 
to  arrange  into  a  system  all  the  results  of  scientific  measur- 
ing and  experiment,  but  to  refer  to  a  single  principle  the 
whole  contrast  between  man  and  woman.  In  this  respect 
the  book  differs  from  all  other  works  on  the  same  subject. 
It  does  not  linger  over  this  or  that  detail,  but  presses  on  to 
its  ultimate  goal ;  it  does  not  heap  investigation  on  investi- 
gation, but  combmes  the  psychical  differences  between  the 
sexes  into  a  system  ;  it  deals  not  with  women,  but  with 
woman.  It  sets  out,  mdeed,  from  the  most  common  and 
obvious  facts,  but  intends  to  reach  a  smgle,  concrete  prin- 
ciple. This  is  not  "  inductive  metaphysics  "  ;  it  is  a  gradual 
approach  to  the  heart  of  psychology. 

The  investigation  is  not  of  details,  but  of  principles  ;  it 
does  not  despise  the  laboratory,  although  the  help  of  the 
laboratory,  with  regard  to  the  deeper  problems,  is  limited 
as  compared  with  the  results  of  introspective  analysis.  An 
artist  who  wishes  to  represent  the  female  form  can  construct 
a  type  without  actually  giving  formal  proof  by  a  series  of 
measurements.  The  artist  does  not  despise  experimental 
results  ;  on  the  contrary,  he  regards  it  as  a  duty  to  gain 
experience  ;  but  for  him  the  collection  of  experimental 
knowledge  is  merely  a  starting-point  for  self-exploration, 
and  in  art  self-exploration  is  exploration  of  the  world. 

The  psychology  used  in  this  exposition  is  purely  philo- 
sophical, although  its  characteristic  method,  justified  by  the 
subject,  is  to  set  out  from  the  most  trivial  details  of  ex- 
perience.   The  task  of  the  philosopher  differs  from  that  of 


X  AUTHOR'S  PREFACE 

the  artist  in  one  important  respect.  The  one  deals  in  sym- 
bols, the  other  in  ideas.  Art  and  philosophy  stand  to  one 
another  as  expression  and  meaning.  The  artist  has  breathed 
in  the  world  to  breathe  it  out  again  ;  the  philosopher  has 
the  world  outside  him  and  he  has  to  absorb  it. 

There  is  always  something  pretentious  in  theory ;  and  the 
real  meaning — which  in  a  work  of  art  is  Nature  herself  and 
in  a  philosophical  system  is  a  much  condensed  generalisa- 
tion, a  thesis  going  to  the  root  of  the  matter  and  proving 
itself — appears  to  strike  against  us  harshly,  almostoffensively. 
Where  my  exposition  is  anti-feminine,  and  that  is  nearly 
everywhere,  men  themselves  will  receive  it  with  little  hearti- 
ness or  conviction  ;  their  sexual  egoism  makes  them  prefer 
to  see  woman  as  they  would  like  to  have  her,  as  they  would 
like  her  to  be. 

I  need  not  say  that  I  am  prepared  for  the  answer  women 
will  have  to  the  judgment  I  have  passed  on  their  sex.  My 
investigation,  indeed,  turns  against  man  in  the  end,  and 
although  in  a  deeper  sense  than  the  advocates  of  women's 
rights  could  anticipate,  assigns  to  man  the  heaviest  and 
most  real  blame.  But  this  will  help  me  little  and  is  of  such 
a  nature  that  it  cannot  in  the  smallest  way  rehabilitate  me 
in  the  minds  of  women. 

The  analysis,  however,  goes  further  than  the  assignment 
of  blame ;  it  rises  beyond  simple  and  superficial  phenomena 
to  heights  from  which  there  opens  not  only  a  view  into  the 
nature  of  woman  and  its  meaning  in  the  universe,  but  also 
the  relation  to  mankind  and  to  the  ultimate  and  most  lofty 
problems.  A  definite  relation  to  the  problem  of  Culture  is 
attained,  and  we  reach  the  part  to  be  played  by  woman  in 
the  sphere  of  ideal  aims.  There,  also,  where  the  problems 
of  Culture  and  of  Mankind  coincide,  I  try  not  merely  to 
explain  but  to  assign  values,  for,  indeed,  in  that  region 
explanation  and  valuation  are  identical. 

To  such  a  wide  outlook  my  investigation  was  as  it  were 
driven,  not  deliberately  steered,  from  the  outset.  The  inade- 
quacy of  all  empirical  psychological  philosophy  follows 
directly  from  empirical  psychology  itself.    The  respect  for 


AUTHOR'S  PREFACE  xi 

empirical  knowledge  will  not  be  injured,  but  rather  will  the 
meaning  of  such  knowledge  be  deepened,  if  man  recognises 
in  phenomena,  and  it  is  from  phenomena  that  he  sets  out, 
any  elements  assuring  him  that  there  is  something  behind 
phenomena,  if  he  espies  the  signs  that  prove  the  existence  of 
something  higher  than  phenomena,  something  that  supports 
phenomena.  We  may  be  assured  of  such  a  first  principle, 
although  no  living  man  can  reach  it.  Towards  such  a 
principle  this  book  presses  and  will  not  flag. 

(Within  the  narrow  limits  to  which  as  yet  the  problem  of 
woman  and  of  woman's  rights  has  been  confined,  there 
has  been  no  place  for  the  venture  to  reach  so  high  a  goal. 
None  the  less  the  problem  is  bound  intimately  with  the 
deepest  riddles  of  existence.  It  can  be  solved,  practically 
or  theoretically,  morally  or  metaphysically,  only  in  relation 
to  an  interpretation  of  the  cosmos. 

Comprehension  of  the  universe,  or  what  passes  for  such, 
stands  in  no  opposition  to  knowledge  of  details ;  on  the 
other  hand  all  special  knowledge  acquires  a  deeper  meaning 
because  of  it.  Comprehension  of  the  universe  is  self- 
creative  ;  it  cannot  arise,  although  the  empirical  knowledge 
of  every  age  expects  it,  as  a  synthesis  of  however  great  a 
sum  of  empirical  knowledge. 

In  this  book  there  lie  only  the  germs  of  a  world-scheme, 
and  these  are  allied  most  closely  with  the  conceptions  of 
Plato,  Kant  and  Christianity.  I  have  been  compelled  for 
the  most  part  to  fashion  for  myself  the  scientific,  psycho- 
logical, philosophical,  logical,  ethical  groundwork.  I  think 
that  at  the  least  I  have  laid  the  foundations  of  many  things 
into  which  I  could  not  go  fully.  I  call  special  attention  to 
the  defects  of  this  part  of  my  work  because  I  attach  more 
importance  to  appreciation  of  what  I  have  tried  to  say 
about  the  deepest  and  most  general  problems  than  to  the 
interest  which  will  certainly  be  aroused  by  my  special 
investigation  of  the  problem  of  woman. 

The  philosophical  reader  may  take  it  amiss  to  find  a 
treatment  of  the  loftiest  and  ultimate  problems  coinciding 
with  the  investigation  of   a  special  problem  of  no  great 


xii  AUTHOR'S  PREFACE 

dignity ;  I  share  with  him  this  distaste.  I  may  say,  how- 
ever, that  I  have  treated  throughout  the  contrast  between 
the  sexes  as  the  starting-point  rather  than  the  goal  of  my 
research.  The  investigation  has  yielded  a  harvest  rich  in 
its  bearing  on  the  fundamental  problems  of  logic  and  their 
relations  to  the  axioms  of  thought,  on  the  theory  of  aesthetics, 
of  love,  and  of  the  beautiful  and  the  good,  and  on  problems 
such  as  individuality  and  morality  and  their  relations,  on 
the  phenomena  of  genius,  the  craving  for  immortality  and 
Hebraism.  Naturally  these  comprehensive  interrelations  aid 
the  special  problem,  for,  as  it  is  considered  from  so  many 
points  of  view,  its  scope  enlarges.  And  if  in  this  wider 
sense  it  be  proved  that  culture  can  give  only  the  smallest 
hope  for  the  nature  of  woman,  if  the  final  results  are  a 
depreciation,  even  a  negation  of  womanhood,  there  will  be 
no  attempt  in  this  to  destroy  what  exists,  to  humble  what 
has  a  value  of  its  own.  Horror  of  my  own  deed  would 
overtake  me  were  I  here  only  destructive  and  had  I  left  only 
a  clean  sheet.  Perhaps  the  affirmations  in  my  book  are  less 
articulate,  but  he  that  has  ears  to  hear  will  hear  them. 

The  treatise  falls  into  two  parts,  the  first  biological- 
psychological,  the  second  logical-philosophical.  It  may  be 
objected  that  I  should  have  done  better  to  make  two  books, 
the  one  treating  of  purely  physical  science,  the  other  intro- 
spective. It  was  necessary  to  be  done  with  biology  before 
turnmg  to  psychology.  The  second  part  treats  of  certain 
psychical  problems  in  a  fashion  totally  different  from  the 
method  of  any  contemporary  naturalist,  and  for  that  reason 
I  think  that  the  removal  of  the  first  part  of  the  book  would 
have  been  at  some  risk  to  many  readers.  Moreover,  the 
first  part  of  the  book  challenges  an  attention  and  criticism 
from  natural  science  possible  in  a  few  places  only  in  the 
second  part,  which  is  chiefly  introspective.  Because  the 
second  part  starts  from  a  conception  of  the  universe  that  is 
anti-positivistic,  many  will  think  it  unscientific  (although 
there  is  given  a  strong  proof  against  Positivism).  For  the 
present  I  must  be  content  with  the  conviction  that  I  have 
rendered  its  due  to   Biology,  and  that  I  have  established 


AUTHOR'S  PREFACE  xiii 

an  enduring  position  for  non-biological,  non-physiological 
psychology. 

'My  investigation  may  be  objected  to  as  in  certain  points 
not  being  supported  by  enough  proof,  but  I  see  little  force 
in  such  an  objection.  For  in  these  matters  what  can 
"  proof "  mean  ?  I  am  not  dealing  with  mathematics  or 
with  the  theory  of  cognition  (except  with  the  latter  in  two 
cases)  ;  I  am  dealing  with  empirical  knowledge,  and  in  that 
one  can  do  no  more  than  point  to  what  exists  ;  in  this 
region  proof  means  no  more  than  the  agreement  of  new 
experience  with  old  experience,  and  it  is  much  the  same 
whether  the  new  phenomena  have  been  produced  experi- 
mentally by  men,  or  have  come  straight  from  the  creative 
hand  of  nature.  Of  such  latter  proofs  my  book  contains 
many. 

Finally,  I  should  like  to  say  that  my  book,  if  I  may  be 
allowed  to  judge  it,  is  for  the  most  part  not  of  a  quality  to 
be  understood  and  absorbed  at  the  first  glance.  I  point  out 
this  myself,  to  guide  and  protect  the  reader. 

The  less  I  found  myself  able  in  both  parts  of  the  book 
(and  especially  in  the  second)  to  confirm  what  now  passes 
for  knowledge,  the  more  anxious  I  have  been  to  point  out 
coincidences  where  I  found  myself  in  agreement  with  what 
has  already  been  known  and  said. 

I  have  to  thank  Professor  Dr.  Laurenz  Müllner  for  the  great 
assistance  he  has  given  me,  and  Professor  Dr.  Friedrich 
Jodl  for  the  kindly  interest  he  has  taken  in  my  work  from 
the  beginning.  I  am  specially  indebted  to  the  kind  friends 
who  have  helped  me  with  correction  of  the  proofs. 


CONTENTS 


Author's  Preface  to  the  First  German  Edition  .        .        ix 


FIRST  OR  PREPARATORY  PART 
SEXUAL  COMPLEXITY 


Introduction 


On  the  development  of  general  conceptions — Male  and  female 
— Contradictions — Transitional  forms — Anatomy  and  natural 
endowment — Uncertainty  of  anatomy 


CHAPTER  I 

Males  and  Females 5 

Embryonic    neutral     condition  —  Rudiments   in    the   adult — 
Degrees  of  "  gonochorism  " — Principle  of  intermediate  forms — 
Male  and  female — Need  for  typical  conceptions — Resum6 — 
Early  anticipations 


CHAPTER  II 

Male  and  Female  Plasmas XI 

Position  of  sexuality — Steenstrup's  view  adopted — Sexual 
characters — Internal  secretions — Idioplasm — Arrhenoplasm 
— Thely plasm — Variations — Proofs  from  the  effects  of  cas- 
tration— Transplantation  and  transfusion — Organotherapy — 
Individual  differences  between  eells — Origin  of  intermediate 
sexual  conditions — Brain — Excess  of  male  births — Determi- 
nation of  sex — Comparative  pathology 


xvi  CONTENTS 


CHAPTER  III 

Pofe 

The  Laws  of  Sexual  Attractiom       ...  .        .      «6 

Sexual  preference — Probability  of  these  being  controlled  by  a 
law — First  formula — First  interpretation  —Proofs — Hetero- 
stylism — Interpretation  of  heterostylism — Animal  kingdom — 
Further  laws — Second  formula — Chemotaxis — Resemblances 
and  differences — Goethe,  "  elective  affinities — Marriage  and 
free  love — Effects  on  progeny 

CHAPTER  IV 

Homo-sexuality  and  Pederasty 45 

Homo-sexuals  as  intermediate  forms — Inborn  or  acquired, 
healthy  or  diseased  ? — A  special  instance  of  the  law  of  attrac- 
tion— All  men  have  the  rudiments  of  homo-sexuality — Friend- 
ship and  sexuality — Animals — Failure  of  medical  treatment 
— Homo-sexuality,  punishment  and  ethics — Distinction 
between  homo-sexuality  and  pederasty 

CHAPTER  V 

The  Science  of  Character  and  the  Science  of  Form  .      53 

Principle  of  sexually  intermediate  forms  as  fundamental  prin- 
ciple ol  the  psychology  rf>f  individuals — Simultaneity  or 
periodicity  ?  —  Methods  of  psychological  investigation — 
EJcamples  —  Individualised  education  —  Conventionalising— 
Parallelism  between  morphology  and  characterology — Phy- 
siognomy and  the  principles  of  psycho-physics — Method  of 
the  doctrine  of  variation — A  new  way  of  stating  the  prob- 
lem— Deductive  morphology — Correlation — Outlook 

CHAPTER  VI 

Emancipated  Women ...      64 

The  woman  question— Claim  for  emancipation  and  maleness^ 
Emancipation  and  homo-sexuality — Sexual  preferences  of 
emancipated  women — Physiognomy  of  emancipated  women — 
Other  celebrated  womeo — Femaleness  and  emancipation — 


CONTENTS  xvii 

Pagt 

Practical  rules — Genius  essentially  male  —  Movements  of 
women  in  historical  times — Periodicity — Biology  and  the 
conception  of  history — Outlook  of  the  woman  movement — 
Its  fundamental  error 


SECOND  OR  PRINCIPAL  PART 

THE  SEXUAL  TYPES 

CHAPTER  I 


Man  and  Woman 


79 


Bisexuality  and  unisexuality — Man  or  woman,  male  or  female 
— Fundamental  difficulty  in  characterology — Experiment, 
analysis  of  sensation  and  psychology — Dilthey — Conception 
of  empirical  character — What  is  and  what  is  not  the  object 
of  psychology — Character  and  individuality — Problem  of 
characterology  and  the  problem  of  the  sexes 

CHAPTER  II 

Male  and  Female  Sexuality 85 

The  problem  of  a  female  psychology — Man  as  the  interpreter 
of  female  psychology — Differences  in  the  sexual  impulse — 
The  absorbing  and  liberating  factors — Intensity  and  activity 
— Sexual  irritability  of  women — Larger  field  of  the  sexual  life 
in  woman — Local  diff'erences  in  the  perception  of  sexuality — 
Local  and  periodical  cessation  of  male  sexuality — Differ- 
ences in  the  degrees  of  consciousness  of  sexuality 

CHAPTER  III 

Male  and  Female  Consciousness 93 

Sensation  and  feeling — Avenarius'  division  into  "  element " 
and  '•  character."  These  inseparable  at  the  earliest  stage — 
Process  of  "  clarification  " — Presentiments — Grades  of  under- 
standing— Forgetting — Paths  and  organisation — Conception 
of  "  henids  " — The  henid  as  the  simplest,  psychical  datum 
— Sexual  differences  in  the  organisation  of  the  contents  of 

b 


xviii  CONTENTS 

the  mind— Sensibility— Certainty  of  judgment — Developed 
consciousness  as  a  male  character 

CHAPTER  IV 

Talent  and  Genius 

Genius  and  talent— Genius  and  giftedness — Methods — Com- 
prehension of  many  men — What  is  meant  by  comprehending 
men — Great  complexity  of  genius — Periods  in  psychic  hfe — 
No  disparagement  of  famous  men — Understanding  and  notic- 
ing— Universal  consciousness  of  genius — Greatest  distance 
from  the  henid  stage — A  higher  grade  of  maleness — Genius 
always  universal — The  female  devoid  of  genius  or  of  hero- 
worship — Giftedness  and  sex 

CHAPTER  V 

Talent  and  Memory 

Organisation  and  the  power  of  reproducing  thoughts — Memory 
of  experiences  a  sign  of  genius — Remarks  and  conclusions — 
Remembrance  and  apperception — Capacity  for  comparison 
and  acquisition — Reasons  for  the  masculinity  of  music, 
drawing  and  painting — Degrees  of  genius — Relation  of  genius 
to  ordinary  men  —  Autobiography  —  Fixed  ideas — Remem- 
brance of  personal  creations — Continuous  and  discontinu- 
ance memory — Continuity  and  piety — Past  and  present — 
Past  and  future — Desire  for  immortality — Existing  psycho- 
logical explanations — True  origin — Inner  development  of 
man  until  death  —  Ontogenetic  psychology  or  theoretical 
biography—  Woman  lacking  in  the  desire  for  immortality — 
Further  extension  of  relation  of  memory  to  genius — Memory 
and  time — Postulate  of  timelessness — Value  as  a  timeless 
quality — First  law  of  the  theory  of  value — Proofs — Individua- 
tion and  duration  constituents  of  value — Desire  for  immor- 
tality a  special  case — Desire  for  immortality  in  genius  con- 
nected with  timelessness,  by  his  universal  memory  and  the 
duration  of  his  creations — Genius  and  history — Genius  and 
nations — Genius  and  language — Men  of  action  and  men  of 
science,  not  to  be  called  men  of  genius  —  Philosophers, 
founders  of  reUgion  and  artists  have  genius 


Pmft 


CONTENTS  xix 

Page 

CHAPTER  VI 

Memory,  Logic  and  Ethics .    14a 

Psychology  and  "  psychologismus  " — Value  of  memory — 
Theory  of  memory — Doctrines  of  practice  and  of  association 
— Confusion  with  recognition —Memory  peculiar  to  man — 
Moral  significance — Lies — Transition  to  logic—  Memory  and 
the  principle  of  identity — Memory  and  the  syllogism — 
Woman  non-logical  and  non-ethical — Intellectual  and  moral 
knowledge — The  intelligible  ego 


CHAPTER  VII 

Logic,  Ethics  and  the  Ego 153 

Critics  of  the  conception  of  the  Ego — Hume:  Lichtenberg, 
Mach — The  ego  of  Mach  and  biology — Individuation  and 
individuaUty — Logic  and  ethics  as  witnesses  for  the  exist- 
ence of  the  ego — Logic — Laws  of  identity  and  of  contraries 
— Their  use  and  significance — Logical  axioms  as  the  laws  of 
essence — Kant  and  Fichte — Freedom  of  thought  and  freedom 
of  the  will — Ethics — Relation  to  logic — The  psychology  of 
the  Kantian  ethics — Kant  and  Nietzsche 


CHAPTER  VIII 

The  •'  I  "  Problem  and  Genius 165 

Characterology  and  the  belief  in  the  *'  I  " — Awakening  of  the 
ego — Jean  Paul,  Novalis,  Schelling — The  awakening  of  the 
ego  and  the  view  of  the  world — Self -consciousness  and  arro- 
gance— The  view  of  the  genius  to  be  more  highly  valued 
than  that  of  other  men — Final  statements  as  to  the  idea  of 
genius — The  personality  of  the  genius  as  the  perfectly- con- 
scious microcosm — The  naturally-  synthetic  activity  of  genius 
— Significant  and  symbolical — Definition  of  the  genius  in 
relation  to  ordinary  men — Universality  as  freedom — Morality 
or  immoraUty  of  genius  ? — Duties  towards  self  and  others — 
What  duty  to  another  is — Criticism  of  moral  sympathy  and 
social  ethics — Understanding  of  other  men  as  the  one  require- 


XX  CONTENTS 

ment  of  morality  and  knowledge — I  and  thou — Individualism 
and  universalism — Morality  only  in  monads — The  man  of 
greatest  genius  as  the  most  moral  man — Why  man  is  faop 
voXiTiKov — Consciousness  and  morality — The  great  criminaf 
— Genius  as  duty  and  submission — Genius  and  crime — 
Genius  and  insanity — Man  as  his  own  creator 


CHAPTER  IX 

Male  and  Female  Psychology i86^ 

SouUessness  of  woman — History  of  this  knowledge — Woman 
devoid  of  genius — No  masculine  women  in  the  true  sense — 
The  unconnectedness  of  woman's  nature  due  to  her  want  of 
an  ego — Revision  of  the  henid-theory — Female  "  thought  " 
— Idea  and  object — Freedom  of  the  object — Idea  and  judg- 
ment— Nature  of  judgment — Woman  and  truth  as  a  criterion 
of  thought — Woman  and  logic  —  Woman  non-moral,  not 
immoral — Woman  and  soUtude — Womanly  sympathy  and 
modesty — The  ego  of  women — Female  vanity — Lack  of  true 
self-appreciation  —  Memory  for  compliments — Introspection 
and  repentance — Justice  and  jealousy — Name  and  individu- 
aUty — Radical  difference  between  male  and  female  mental 
life — Psychology  with  and  without  soul — Is  psychology  a 
science  ? — Soul  and  psychology — Problem  of  the  influence  of 
the  psychical  sexual  characters  of  the  male  or  the  female 

CHAPTER  X 

Motherhood  and  Prostitution «14 

Special  characterology  of  woman — Mother  and  prostitute — 
Relation  of  two  types  to  the  child — Woman  polygamous — 
Analogies  between  motherhood  and  sexuality — Motherhood 
and  the  race — Maternal  love  ethically  indifferent — The  pros- 
titute careless  of  the  race — The  prostitute,  the  criminal  and 
the  conqueror — Emperor  and  prostitute — Motive  of  the  pros- 
titute— Coitus  an  end  in  itself — Coquetry — The  sensations  of 
the  woman  in  coitus  in  relation  to  the  rest  of  her  life — The 
prostitute  as  the  enemy — The  friend  of  life  and  its  enemy — 
No  prostitution  amongst  animals — Its  origin  a  mystery 


CONTENTS  xxi 

Fage 

CHAPTER  XI 

Erotics  and  iEsxHETics 236 

Women,  and  the  hatred  of  women — Erotics  and  sexuality — 
Platonic  love — The  idea  of  love — Beauty  of  women — Relation 
to  sexual  impulse — Love  and  beauty — Difference  between 
aesthetics,  logic  and  ethics — Modes  of  love — Projection  phe- 
nomena— Beauty  and  morality — Nature  and  ethics — Natural 
and  artistic  beauty — Sexual  love  as  guilt — Hate,  love  and 
morality — Creation  of  the  devil — Love  and  sympathy — Love 
and  shyness — Love  and  vanity — Love  of  woman  as  a  means  to 
an  end — Relation  between  the  child  and  love,  the  child  and 
sexuahty — Love  and  murder — Madonna-worship — Madonna, 
a  male  idea,  without  basis  in  womanhood — Woman  sexual, 
not  erotic — Sense  of  beauty  in  women — How  man  acts  on 
woman — The  fate  of  the  woman — Why  man  loves  woman 


CHAPTER  XII 

The    Nature    of    Woman    and    Her    Significance    in   the 

Universe 252 

Meaning  of  womanhood — Instinct  for  pairing  or  matchmaking 
— Man,  and  matchmaking — High  valuation  of  coitus — Indi- 
vidual sexual  impulse,  a  special  case — Womanhood  as  pairing 
or  universal  sexuality — Organic  falseness  of  woman — 
Hysteria — Difference  between  man  and  beast,  woman  and 
man — The  higher  and  lower  life — Birth  and  death — Freedom 
and  happiness — Happiness  and  man — Happiness  and  woman 
— Woman  and  the  problem  of  existence — Non-existence  of 
woman — Male  and  female  friendship — Pairing  identical  with 
womanhood — Why  women  must  be  regarded  as  human — 
Gantrast  between  subject — Object,  matter,  form,  man, 
woman — Meaning  of  henids — Formation  of  woman  by  man 
— Significance  of  woman  in  the  universe — Man  as  something, 
woman  as  nothing — Psychological  problem  of  the  fear  of 
woman — Womanhood  and  crime — Creation  of  woman  by 
man's  crime — Woman  as  his  own  sexuality  accepted  by  man 
— Woman  as  the  guilt  of  man — What  man's  love  of  woman  is. 
in  its  deepest  significance 


xxü  CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  XIII  ^'^ 

Judaism 301 

Differences  amongst  men  —  Intermediate  forms  and  racial 
anthropology  —  Comparison  of  Judaism  and  femaleness 
— Jud.dsm  as  an  idea — Antisemitism — Rictiard  Wagner — 
Similarities  between  Jews  and  women — Judaism  in  science — 
The  Jew  not  a  monad — The  Jew  and  the  Englishman — 
Natureof  humour — Humour  and  satire — The  Jewess — Deepest 
significance  of  Judaism — Want  of  faith — The  Jew  not  non- 
mystical,  yet  impious — Want  of  earnestness,  and  pride — The 
Jew  as  opposed  to  the  hero — Judaism  and  Christianity — 
Origin  of  Christianity — Problem  of  the  founders  of  religion 
—  Christ  as  the  conqueror  of  the  Judaism  in  Himself — The 
founders  of  religions  as  the  greatest  of  men — Conquest  of 
inherent  Judaism  necessary  for  all  founders  of  reUgion — 
Judaism  and  the  present  time — Judaism,  femaleness,  culture 
and  humanity 


CHAP  I  ER  XIV 

Woman  and  Mankind 331 

The  idea  of  humanity,  and  woman  as  the  match-maker — 
Goethe-worship — Womanising  of  man — Virginity  and  purity 
— Male  origin  of  these  ideas  -  Failure  of  woman  to  understand 
the  erotic — Woman's  relation  to  sexuality — Coitus  and  love 
— Woman  as  the  enemy  of  her  own  emancipation — Asceticism 
immoral — Sexual  impulse  as  a  want  of  respect —  Problem  of 
the  Jew — Problem  of  the  woman — Problem  of  slavery — Moral 
relation  to  women — Man  as  the  opponent  of  emancipation — 
Ethical  postulates — Two  possibilities — The  problem  of 
women  as  the  problem  of  humanity — Subjection  of  women — 
Persistence  or  disappearance  of  the  human  race — True 
ground  of  the  immorality  of  the  sexual  impulse — Earthly 
paternity — Inclusion  of  women  in  the  conception  of  humanity 
— The  mother  and  the  education  of  the  human  race — Last 
questions 

Index • 350 


FIRST   OR   PREPARATORY   PART 
SEXUAL  COMPLEXITY 


INTRODUCTION 

All  thought  begins  with  conceptions  to  a  certain  extent 
generalised,  and  thence  is  developed  in  two  directions.  On 
the  one  hand,  generalisations  become  wider  and  wider, 
binding  together  by  common  properties  a  larger  and  larger 
number  of  phenomena,  and  so  embracing  a  wider  field  of 
the  world  of  facts.  On  the  other  hand,  thought  approaches 
more  closely  the  meeting-point  of  all  conceptions,  the 
individual,  the  concrete  complex  unit  towards  which  w^e 
approach  only  by  thinking  in  an  ever-narrowing  circle,  and 
by  continually  being  able  to  add  new  specific  and  differen- 
tiating attributes  to  the  general  idea,  "  thing,"  or  "  some- 
thing." It  was  known  that  fishes  formed  a  class  of  the 
animal  kingdom  distinct  from  mammals,  birds,  or  inverte- 
brates, long  before  it  was  recognised  on  the  one  hand  that 
fishes  might  be  bony  or  cartilaginous,  or  on  the  other  that 
fishes,  birds  and  mammals  composed  a  group  differing  from 
the  invertebrates  by  many  common  characters. 

The  self-assertion  of  the  mind  over  the  world  of  facts 
in  all  its  complexity  of  innumerable  resemblances  and 
differences  has  been  compared  with  the  rule  of  the  struggle 
for  existence  among  living  beings.  Our  conceptions  stand 
between  us  and  reality.  It  is  only  step  by  step  that  we 
can  control  them.  As  in  the  case  of  a  madman,  we  may  first 
have  to  throw  a  net  over  the  whole  body  so  that  some 
limit  may  be  set  to  his  struggles  ;  and  only  after  the  whole 
has  been  thus  secured,  is  it  possible  to  attend  to  the  proper 
restraint  of  each  limb. 

Two  general  conceptions  have  come  down  to  us  from 
primitive  mankind,  and  from  the  earliest  times  have  held 
our  mental  processes  in  their  leash.     Many  a  time  these 

A 


2  SEX  AND  CHARACTER 

conceptions  have  undergone  trivial  corrections ;  they  have 
been  sent  to  the  workshop  and  patched  in  head  and  limbs ; 
they  have  been  lopped  and  added  to,  expanded  here,  con- 
tracted there,  as  when  new  needs  pierce  through  and 
through  an  old  law  of  suffrage,  bursting  bond  after  bond. 
None  the  less,  in  spite  of  all  amendment  and  alteration,  we 
have  still  to  reckon  with  the  primitive  conceptions,  male 
and  female. 

It  is  true  that  among  those  we  call  women  are  some  who 
are  meagre,  narrow-hipped,  angular,  muscular,  energetic, 
highly  mentalised  ;  there  are  "  women  "  with  short  hair  and 
deep  voices,  just  as  there  are  "  men  "  who  are  beardless  and 
gossiping.  We  know,  in  fact,  that  there  are  unwomanly 
women,  man-like  women,  and  unmanly,  womanish,  woman- 
like men.  \We  assign  sex  to  human  beings  from  their  birth 
on  one  character  only,  and  so  come  to  add  contradictory 
ideas  to  our  conceptions.     Such  a  course  is  illogical/ 

In  private  conversation  or  in  society,  in  scientific  or 
general  meetings,  we  have  all  taken  part  in  frothy  discus- 
sions on  "  Man  and  Woman,"  or  on  the  "  Emancipation  of 
Women."  There  is  a  pitiful  monotony  in  the  fashion 
according  to  which,  on  such  occasions,  "  men "  and 
"women"  have  been  treated  as  if,  like  red  and  white  balls, 
they  were  alike  in  all  respects  save  colour.  In  no  case 
has  the  discussion  been  confined  to  an  individual  case,  and 
as  every  one  had  different  individuals  in  their  mind,  a  real 
agreement  was  impossible.  As  people  meant  different  things 
by  the  same  words,  there  was  a  complete  disharmony  be- 
tween language  and  ideas.  Is  it  really  the  case  that  all 
women  and  men  are  marked  off  sharply  from  each  other, 
the  women,  on  the  one  hand,  alike  in  all  points,  the  men  on 
the  other  ?  It  is  certainly  the  case  that  all  previous  treat- 
ment of  the  sexual  differences,  perhaps  unconsciously,  has 
implied  this  view.  And  yet  nowhere  else  in  nature  is  there 
such  a  yawning  discontinuity.  There  are  transitional  forms 
between  the  metals  and  non-metals,  between  chemical  com- 
binations and  mixtures,  between  animals  and  plants,  between 
phanerogams  and  cryptogams,  and  between  mammals  and 


INTRODUCTION  3 

birds.  It  is  only  in  obedience  to  the  most  general,  practical 
demand  for  a  superficial  view  that  we  classify,  make  sharp 
divisions,  pick  out  a  single  tune  from  the  continuous  melody 
of  nature.  But  the  old  conceptions  of  the  mind,  like  the 
customs  of  primitive  commerce,  become  foolish  in  a  new 
age.  From  the  analogies  I  have  given,  the  improbability 
may  henceforward  be  taken  for  granted  of  finding  in  nature 
a  sharp  cleavage  between  all  that  is  masculine  on  the  one 
side  and  all  that  is  feminine  on  the  other ;  or  that  a  living 
being  is  so  simple  in  this  respect  that  it  can  be  put  wholly 
on  one  side  or  the  other  of  the  line.  Matters  are  not  so 
clear. 

In  the  controversy  as  to  the  woman  question,  appeal  has 
been  made  to  the  arbitration  of  anatomy,  in  the  hope  that 
by  that  aid  a  line  could  be  drawn  between  those  characters 
of  males  or  females  that  are  unalterable  because  inborn, 
and  those  that  are  acquired.  (It  was  a  strange  adventure  to 
attempt  to  decide  the  differences  between  the  natural 
endowment  of  men  and  women  on  anatomical  results ; 
to  suppose  that  if  all  other  investigation  failed  to  establish 
the  difference,  the  matter  could  be  settled  by  a  few  more 
grains  of  brain-weight  on  the  one  side.)  ^However,  the 
answer  of  the  anatomists  is  clear  enough,  whether  it  refer 
to  the  brain  or  to  any  other  portion  of  the  body ;  absolute 
sexual  distinctions  between  all  men  on  the  one  side  and  all 
women  on  the  other  do  not  exist)  Although  the  skeleton  of 
the  hand  of  most  men  is  different  from  that  of  most  women, 
yet  the  sex  cannot  be  determined  with  certainty  either  from 
the  skeleton  or  from  an  isolated  part  with  its  muscles, 
tendons,  skin,  blood  and  nerves.  The  same  is  true  of  the 
chest,  sacrum  or  skull.  And  what  are  we  to  say  of  the 
pelvis,  that  part  of  the  skeleton  in  which,  if  anywhere,  striking 
sexual  differences  exist  ?  It  is  almost  universally  believed  that 
in  the  one  case  the  pelvis  is  adapted  for  the  act  of  parturition, 
in  the  other  case  is  not  so  adapted.  And  yet  the  character 
of  the  pelvis  cannot  be  taken  as  an  absolute  criterion  of  sex. 
There  are  to  be  found,  and  the  wayfarer  knows  this  as  well 
as  the  anatomist,  many  women  with  narrow  male-like  pelves, 


4  SEX  AND  CHARACTER 

and  many  men  with  the  broad  pelves  of  women.     Are  we 
then  to  make  nothing  of  sexual  differences  ?    That  would ; 
imply,  almost,  that  we  could  not  distinguish  between  men 
and  women. 

From  what  quarter  are  we  to  seek  help  in  our  problem  ? 
The  old  doctrine  is  insufficient,  and  yet  we  cannot  make 
shift  without  it.  If  the  received  ideas  do  not  suffice,  it 
must  be  our  task  to  seek  out  new  and  better  guides. 


CHAPTER   I 

"MALES"  AND  "FEMALES" 

In  the  widest  treatment  of  most  living  things,  a  blunt  separa- 
tion of  them  into  males  or  females  no  longer  suffices  for  the 
known  facts.  The  limitations  of  these  conceptions  have 
been  felt  more  or  less  by  many  writers.  The  first  purpose 
of  this  work  is  to  make  this  point  clear. 

I  agree  with  other  authors  who,  in  a  recent  treatment  of 
the  facts  connected  with  this  subject,  have  taken  as  a  start- 
ing-point what  has  been  established  by  embryology  regard- 
ing the  existence  in  human  beings,  plants,  and  animals  of 
an  embryonic  stage  neutral  as  regards  sex. 

In  the  case  of  a  human  embryo  of  less  than  five  weeks, 
for  instance,  the  sex  to  which  it  would  afterwards  beiong 
cannot  be  recognised.  In  the  fifth  week  of  fcetal  life  pro- 
cesses begin  which,  by  the  end  of  the  fifth  month  of  preg- 
nancy, have  turned  the  genital  rudiments,  at  first  alike  m 
the  sexes,  into  one  sex  and  have  determined  the  sex  of  the 
whole  organism.  The  details  of  these  processes  need  not 
be  described  more  fully  here.  It  can  be  shown  that  how- 
ever distinctly  unisexual  an  adult  plant,  animal  or  human 
being  may  be,  there  is  always  a  certain  persistence  of  the 
bisexual  character,  <never  a  complete  disappearance  of  the 
characters  of  the  andeveloped  sex)  Sexual  differentiation,  in 
fact,  is  never  complete.  All  the  peculiarities  of  the  male  sex 
may  be  present  in  the  female  in  some  form,  however  weakly 
developed  ;  and  so  also  the  sexual  characteristics  of  the 
woman  persist  in  the  man,  although  perhaps  they  are  not 
so  completely  rudimentary.  The  characters  of  the  other 
sex  occur  in  the  one  sex  in  a  vestigial  form.    Thus,  in  the 


6  SEX  AND  CHARACTER 

case  of  human  beings,  in  which  our  interest  is  greatest,  to 
take  an  example,  it  will  be  found  that  the  most  womanly 
woman  has  a  growth  of  colourless  hair, known  as  "lanugo" 
in  the  position  of  the  male  beard  ;  and  in  the  most  manly 
man  there  are  developed  under  the  skin  of  the  breast  masses 
of  glandular  tissue  connected  with  the  nipples.  ^This  con- 
dition of  things  has  been  minutely  investij^ated  in  the  true 
genital  organs  and  ducts,  the  region  called  the  "  urino-geni- 
tal  tract,"  and  in  each  sex  there  has  been  found  a  complete 
but  rudimentary  set  of  parallels  to  the  organs  of  the  other 
sex./ 

These  embryological  conclusions  can  be  brought  into 
relation  with  another  set  of  facts.  Haeckel  has  used  the 
word  "  gonochorism  "  for  the  separation  ol  the  sexes,  and 
in  different  classes  and  groups  of  creatures  different 
degrees  of  gonochorism  may  be  noted.  Different  kmds 
of  animals  and  plants  may  be  distinguished  by  the  extent 
to  which  the  characters  of  one  sex  are  rudimentary  in  the 
other.  The  most  extreme  case  of  sexual  differentiation,  the 
sharpest  gonochorism,  occurs  in  sexual  dimorphism,  that  is 
to  say,  in  that  condition  of  affairs  in  which  (as  for  instance 
in  some  water-fleas)  the  males  and  females  of  the  same 
species  differ  as  much  or  even  more  from  each  other  as  the 
members  of  different  species,  or  genera.  There  is  not  so 
sharply  marked  gonochorism  amongst  vertebrates  as  in  the 
case  of  Crustacea  or  insects.  Amongst  the  former  there  does 
not  exist  a  distinction  betwee  i  m  des  and  females  so  complete 
as  to  reach  sexual  dimorphis  n.  A  condition  much  more 
frequent  amongst  them  is  the  occurrence  of  forms  inter- 
mediate in  regard  to  sex,  what  is  called  abnormal  hermaph- 
roditism ;  whilst  in  certain  fishes  hermaphroditism  is  the 
normal  condition. 

I  must  point  out  here  that  it  must  not  be  assumed  that 
there  exist  only  extreme  males  with  scanty  remnants  of  the 
female  condition,  extreme  females  with  traces  of  the  male, 
hermaphrodite  or  transitional  forms,  and  wide  gaps  between 
these  conditions.  I  am  dealing  specially  with  human  beings, 
but  what  I  have  to  say  of  them  might  be  applied,  with  more 


I  "MALES"  AND  "FEMALES"  7 

or  less  modification,  to  nearly  all  creatures  in  which  sexual 
reproduction  takes  place. 

Amongst  human  beings  the  state  of  the  case  is  as  follows  : 
There  exist  all  sorts  of  intermediate  conditions  between  male 
and  female — sexual  transitional  forms.  In  physical  inquiries 
an  "  ideal  gas  "  is  assumed,  that  is  to  say,  a  gas,  the  be- 
haviour of  which  follows  the  law  of  Boyle-Guy-Lussac 
exactly,  although,  in  fact,  no  such  gas  exists,  and  laws  are 
deduced  from  this  so  that  the  deviations  from  the  ideal  laws 
may  be  established  in  the  case  of  actually  existing  gases.  In 
the  same  fashion  we  may  suppose  the  existence  of  an  ideal 
man,  M,  and  of  an  ideal  woman,  W,  as  sexual  types, 
although  these  types  do  not  actually  exist.  Such  types  not 
only  can  be  constructed,  but  must  be  constructed.  As  in 
art  so  in  science,  the  real  purpose  is  to  reach  the  type,  the 
Platonic  Idea.  The  science  of  physics  investigates  the 
behaviour  of  bodies  that  are  absolutely  rigid  or  absolutely 
elastic,  in  the  full  knowledge  that  neither  the  one  nor  the 
other  actually  exists.  The  intermediate  conditions  actually 
existing  between  the  two  absolute  states  of  matter  serve 
merely  as  a  starting-point  for  investigation  of  the  *'  types" 
and  in  the  practical  application  of  the  theory  are  treated 
as  mixtures  and  exhaustively  analysed.  So  also  there 
exist  only  the  intermediate  stages  between  absolute  males 
and  females,  the  absolute  conditions  never  presenting  them- 
selves. 

Let  it  be  noted  clearly  that  I  am  discussing  the  existence 
not  merely  of  embryonic  sexual  neutrality,  but  of  a  per- 
manent bisexual  condition.  Nor  am  I  taking  into  con- 
sideration merely  those  intermediate  sexual  conditions, 
those  bodily  or  psychical  hermaphrodites  upon  which,  up 
to  the  present,  attention  has  been  concentrated.  In 
^'another  respect  my  conception  is  new.  Until  now,  in  deal- 
ing with  sexual  intermediates,  only  hermaphrodites  were 
considered  ;  as  if,  to  use  a  physical  analogy,  there  were  in 
between  the  two  extremes  a  single  group  of  intermediate 
forms,  and  not  an  intervening  tract  equally  beset  with  stages 
in  different  degrees  of  transition. 


8  SEX  AND  CHARACTER 

The  fact  is  that  males  and  females  are  like  two  sub- 
stances combined  in  different  proportions,  but  with  either 
element  never  wholly  missing.  We  find,  so  to  speak, 
never  either  a  man  or  a  woman,  but  only  the  male  con- 
dition and  the  female  condition.  Any  individual,  "  A "  or 
"  B,"  is  never  to  be  designated  merely  as  a  man  or  a 
woman,  but  by  a  formula  showing  that  it  is  a  composite 
of  male  and  female  characters  in  different  proportions,  for 
instance,  as  follows  : 

la'W  Xß'M 

always  remembering  that  each  of  the  factors  a,  a,  ß,  ß'  must 
be  greater  than  o  and  less  than  unity. 

Further  proofs  of  the  validity  of  this  conception  are 
numerous,  and  I  have  already  given,  in  the  preface,  a 
few  of  the  most  general.  We  may  recall  the  existence  of 
"  men  "  with  female  pelves  and  female  breasts,  with  narrow 
waists,  overgrowth  of  the  hair  of  the  head ;  or  of 
"  women  "  with  small  hips  and  flat  breasts,  with  deep  bass 
voices  and  beards  (the  presence  of  hair  on  the  chin  is 
more  common  than  is  supposed,  as  women  naturally  are  at 
pains  to  remove  it ;  I  am  not  speaking  of  the  special  growth 
that  often  appears  on  the  faces  of  women  who  have  reached 
middle  age).  All  such  peculiarities,  many  of  them  coin- 
ciding in  the  same  individuals,  are  well  known  to  doctors 
and  anatomists,  although  their  general  significance  has  not 
been  understood. 

One  of  the  most  striking  proofs  of  the  view  that  I  have 
been  unfolding  is  presented  by  the  great  range  of  numerical 
variation  to  be  found  where  sexual  characters  have  been 
measured  either  by  the  same  or  by  different  anthropological 
or  anatomical  workers.  The  figures  obtained  by  measuring 
female  characters  do  not  begin  where  those  got  from  males 
leave  off,  but  the  two  sets  overlap.  The  more  obvious  this 
uncertainty  in  the  theory  of  sexual  intermediate  forms  may 
be,  the  more  is  it  to  be  deplored  in  the  interests  of  true 
science.     Anatomists  and  anthropologists   of  the  ordinary 


«  MALES  "  AND  "  FEMALES  "  9 

:ype  have  by  no  means  striven  against  the  scientific  repre- 
sentation of  the  sexual  types,  but  as  for  the  most  part  they 
regarded  measurements  as  the  best  indications,  they  were 
overwhelmed  with  the  number  of  exceptions,  and  thus,  so 
far,  measurement  has  brought  only  vague  and  indefinite 
results. 

The  course  of  statistical  science,  which  marks  off  our  in- 
dustrial age  from  earlier  times,  although  perhaps  on  account 
of  its  distant  relation  to  mathematics  it  has  been  regarded 
as  specially  scientific,  has  in  reality  hindered  the  progress  of 
knowledge.  It  has  dealt  with  averages,  not  with  types.  It 
has  not  been  recognised  that  in  pure,  as  opposed  to  applied, 
science  it  is  the  type  that  must  be  studied.  And  so  those 
who  are  concerned  with  the  type  must  turn  their  backs  on 
the  methods  and  conclusions  of  current  morphology  and 
physiology.  The  real  measurements  and  investigations  of 
details  have  yet  to  be  made.  Those  that  now  exist  are 
inapplicable  to  true  science. 

Knowledge  must  be  obtained  of  male  and  female  by  means 
of  a  right  construction  of  the  ideal  man  and  the  ideal  woman, 
using  the  word  ideal  in  the  sense  of  typical,  excluding  judg- 
ment as  to  value.  When  these  types  have  been  recognised 
and  built  up  we  shall  be  in  a  position  to  consider  individual 
cases,  and  their  analysis  as  mixtures  in  different  proportions 
will  be  neither  difficult  not  fruitless. 

I  shall  now  give  a  summary  of  the  contents  of  this  chap- 
ter. Living  beings  cannot  be  described  bluntly  as  of  one 
sex  or  the  other.  The  real  world  from  the  point  of  view  of 
sex  may  be  regarded  as  swaying  between  two  points,  no 
actual  individual  being  at  either  point,  but  somewhere  be- 
tween the  two.  The  task  of  science  is  to  define  the  position 
of  any  individual  between  these  two  points.  The  absolute 
conditions  at  the  two  extremes  are  not  metaphysical  abstrac- 
tions above  or  outside  the  world  of  experience,  but  their 
construction  is  necessary  as  a  philosophical  and  practical 
mode  of  describing  the  actual  world. 

A  presentiment  of  this  bisexuality  of  life  (derived  from  the 
actual  absence  of  complete  sexual  differentiation)  is  very  old. 


10  SEX  AND  CHARACTER 

Traces  of  it  may  be  found  in  Chinese  myths,  but  it  became 
active  in  Greek  thought.  We  may  recall  the  mythical  per- 
sonification of  bisexuality  in  the  Hermaphroditos,  the 
narrative  of  Aristophanes  in  the  Platonic  dialogue,  or  in  later 
times  the  suggestion  of  a  Gnostic  sect  (Theophites)  that 
primitive  man  was  a  "  man-woman." 


CHAPTER   II 

MALE  AND  FEMALE  PLASMAS 

The  first  thing  expected  of  a  book  like  this,  the  avowed 
object  of  which  is  a  complete  revision  of  facts  hitherto 
accepted,  is  that  it  should  expound  a  new  and  satisfactory 
account  of  the  anatomical  and  physiological  characters  of 
the  sexual  types.  Quite  apart  from  the  abstract  question  as 
to  whether  the  complete  survey  of  a  subject  so  enormous 
is  not  beyond  the  powers  of  one  individual,  I  must  at  once 
disclaim  any  intention  of  making  the  attempt.  I  do  not 
pretend  to  have  made  sufficient  independent  investigations 
in  a  field  so  wide,  nor  do  I  think  such  a  review  necessary 
for  the  purpose  of  this  book.  Nor  is  it  necessary  to  give  a 
compilation  of  the  results  set  out  by  other  authors,  for 
Havelock  Ellis  has  already  done  this  very  well.  Were  I  to 
attempt  to  reach  the  sexual  types  by  means  of  the  probable 
inferences  drawn  from  his  collected  results,  my  work  would 
be  a  mere  hypothesis  and  science  might  have  been  spared  a 
new  book.  The  arguments  in  this  chapter,  therefore,  will 
be  of  a  rather  formal  and  general  nature  ;  they  will  relate  to 
biological  principles,  but  to  a  certain  extent  will  lay  stress 
on  the  need  for  a  closer  investigation  of  certain  definite 
points,  work  which  must  be  left  to  the  future,  but  which 
may  be  rendered  more  easy  by  my  indications. 

Those  who  know  little  of  Biology  may  scan  this  section 
hastily,  and  yet  run  little  risk  of  failing  to  understand  what 
follows. 

The  doctrine  of  the  existence  of  different  degrees  of 
masculinity  and  femininity  may  be  treated,  in  the  first  place, 
on  purely  anatomical  lines.    Not  only  the  anatomical  form, 


12  SEX  AND  CHARACTER 

but  the  anatomical  position  of  male  and  female  characters 
must  be  discussed.  The  examples  already  given  of  irxual 
differences  in  other  parts  of  the  body  showed  that  sexuality 
is  not  limited  to  the  genital  organs  and  glands.  But  where 
are  the  limits  to  be  placed  ?  Do  they  not  reach  beyond  the 
primary  and  secondary  sexual  characters  ?  In  other  words, 
where  does  sex  display  itself,  and  where  is  it  without 
influence  ? 

Many  points  came  to  light  in  the  last  decade,  which  bring 
fresh  support  to  a  theory  first  put  forward  in  1840,  but 
which  at  the  time  found  little  support  since  it  appeared  to 
be  in  direct  opposition  to  facts  held  as  established  alike 
by  the  author  of  the  theory  and  by  his  opponents.  The 
theory  in  question,  first  suggested  by  the  zoologist  J.  J.  S. 
Steenstrup,  of  Copenhagen,  ^^but  since  supported  by  many 
others,  is  that  sexual  characters  are  present  in  every  part 
of  the  body.) 

Ellis  has  collected  the  results  of  investigations  on  almost 
every  tissue  of  the  body,  which  serve  to  show  the  universal 
presence  of  sexual  differences.  It  is  plain  that  there  is  a 
striking  difference  in  the  coloration  of  the  typical  male 
and  female.  This  fact  establishes  the  existence  of  sexual 
differences  in  the  skin  (cutis)  and  in  the  blood-vessels,  and 
also  in  the  bulk  of  the  colouring-matter  in  the  blood  and  in 
the  number  of  red  corpuscles  to  the  cubic  centimetre  of  the 
blood  fluid.  Bischoff  and  Rudinger  have  proved  the  exist- 
ence of  sexual  differences  in  brain  weight,  and  more  recently 
Justus  and  Alice  Gaule  have  obtained  a  similar  result  with 
regard  to  such  vegetative  organs  as  the  liver,  lungs  and 
spleen.  In  fact,  all  parts  of  a  woman,  although  in  different 
degrees  in  different  zones,  have  a  sexual  stimulus  for  the 
male  organism,  and  similarly  all  parts  of  the  male  have  their 
effect  on  the  female. 

The  direct  logical  inference  may  be  drawn,  and  is  sup- 
ported by  abundant  facts,  that  every  cell  in  the  body  is 
sexually  characteristic  and  has  its  definite  sexual  signifi- 
cance. I  may  now  add  to  the  principle  already  laid  down  in 
this  book,  of  the  universal  presence  of  sexually  intermediate 


MALE  AND  FEMALE  PLASMAS  13 

conditions,  that  these  conditions  may  present  different 
degrees  of  development.  Such  a  conception  of  the  exist- 
ence of  different  degrees  of  development  in  sexuality  makes 
it  easy  to  understand  cases  of  false  hermaphroditism  or  even 
of  the  true  hermaphroditism,  which,  since  the  time  of 
Steenstrup,  has  been  established  for  so  many  plants  and 
animals,  although  not  certainly  in  the  case  of  man.  Steen- 
strup wrote  :  "  If  the  sex  of  an  animal  has  its  seat  only  in 
the  genital  organs,  then  one  might  think  it  possible  for  an 
animal  really  to  be  bisexual,  if  it  had  at  the  same  time  two 
sets  of  sexual  organs.  But  sex  is  not  limited  to  one  region, 
it  manifests  itself  not  merely  by  the  presence  of  certain 
organs ;  it  pervades  the  whole  being  and  shows  itself  in 
every  point.  In  a  male  body,  everything  down  to  the 
smallest  part  is  male,  however  much  it  may  resemble  the 
correspondmg  lemale  part,  and  so  also  in  the  female  the 
smallest  part  is  female.  The  presence  of  male  and  female 
sexual  organs  in  the  same  body  would  make  the  body 
bisexual  only  if  both  sexes  ruled  the  whole  body  and  made 
themselves  manifest  in  every  point,  and  such  a  condition,  as 
the  manifestations  of  the  sexes  are  opposing  forces,  would 
result  simply  in  the  negation  of  sex  in  the  body  in  question." 
If,  however,  the  principle  of  the  existence  of  innumerable 
sexually  transitional  conditions  be  extended  to  all  the  cells 
of  the  body,  and  empirical  knowledge  supports  such  a  view, 
Steenstrup's  difficulty  is  resolved,  and  hermaphroditism  no 
longer  appears  to  be  unnatural.  There  may  be  conceived 
for  every  cell  all  conditions,  from  complete  masculinity 
through  all  stages  of  diminishing  masculinity  to  its  com- 
plete absence  and  the  consequent  presence  of  complete 
femininity.  Whether  we  are  to  think  of  these  gradations  in 
the  scale  of  sexual  differentiation  as  depending  on  two  real 
substances  united  in  different  proportions,  or  as  a  single 
kind  of  protoplasm  modified  in  different  ways  (as,  for 
instance,  by  different  spatial  dispositions  of  its  molecules), 
it  were  wiser  not  to  guess.  The  first  conception  is  difficult 
to  apply  physiologically  ;  it  is  extremely  difficult  to  imagine 
that  two  sets  of  conditions  should  be  able  to  produce  the 


14  SEX  AND  CHARACTER 

essential  physiological  similarities  of  two  bodies,  one  with  a 
male  and  the  other  a  female  diathesis.  The  second  view 
recalls  too  vividly  certain  unfortunate  speculations  on 
heredity.  Perhaps  both  views  are  equally  far  from  the 
truth.  At  present  empirical  knowledge  does  not  enable  us 
to  say  wherein  the  masculinity  or  the  femininity  of  a  cell 
really  lies,  or  to  define  the  histological,  molecular  or 
chemical  differences  which  distinguish  every  cell  of  a  male 
from  every  cell  of  a  female.  Without  anticipating  any  dis- 
covery of  the  future  (it  is  plain  already,  however,  that  the 
specific  phenomena  of  living  matter  are  not  going  to  be 
referred  to  chemistry  and  physics),  it  may  be  taken  for 
granted  that  individual  cells  possess  sexuality  in  different 
degrees  quite  apart  from  the  sexuality  of  the  whole  body. 
Womanish  men  usually  have  the  skin  softer,  and  in  them 
the  cells  of  the  male  organs  have  a  lessened  power  of 
division  upon  which  depends  directly  the  poorer  develop- 
ment of  the  male  macroscopic  characters. 

The  distribution  of  sexual  characters  affords  an  important 
proof  of  the  appearance  of  sexuality  in  different  degrees. 
Such  characters  (at  least  in  the  animal  kingdom)  may  be 
arranged  according  to  the  strength  of  their  exciting  influ- 
ence on  the  opposite  sex.  To  avoid  confusion,  I  shall 
make  use  of  John  Hunter's  terms  for  classifying  sexual 
characters.  The  primordial  sexual  characters  are  the  male 
and  female  genital  glands  (testes  and  epididymis,  ovaries 
and  epoophoron) ;  the  primary  sexual  characters  are  the 
internal  appendages  of  the  sexual  glands  (vasa  deferential 
vesiculae  seminales,  oviducts  and  uterus),  which  may  have 
sexual  characters  quite  distinct  from  those  of  the  glands 
and  the  external  sexual  organs,  according  to  which  alone 
the  sex  of  human  beings  is  reckoned  at  birth  (sometimes 
quite  erroneously,  as  I  shall  show)  and  their  consequent  fate 
in  life  decided.  After  the  primary,  come  all  those  sexual 
characters  not  directly  necessary  to  reproduction.  Such 
secondary  sexual  characters  are  best  defined  as  those  which 
begin  to  appear  at  puberty,  and  which  cannot  be  developed 
except  under  the  influence  on  the  system  of  the  internal 


MALE  AND  FEMALE  PLASMAS  15 

secretions  of  the  genital  glands.  Examples  of  these  are  the 
beards  in  men,  the  luxuriant  growth  of  hair  in  women,  the 
i  development  of  the  mammary  glands,  the  character  of  the 
voice.  As  a  convenient  mode  of  treatment,  and  for  practical 
rather  than  theoretical  reasons,  certain  inherited  characters, 
such  as  the  development  of  muscular  strength  or  of  mental 
obstinacy  may  be  reckoned  as  tertiary  sexual  characters. 
Under  the  designation  "quaternary  sexual  characters"  may 
be  placed  such  accessories  as  relative  social  position,  differ- 
ence in  habit,  mode  of  livelihood,  the  smoking  and  drinking 
habit  in  man,  and  the  dom  -stic  duties  of  women.  All  these 
characters  possess  a- potent  and  direct  sexual  influence,  and 
in  my  opinion  often  may  be  reckoned  with  the  tertiary 
characters  or  even  with  the  secondary.  \This  classification 
of  sexual  characters  must  not  be  taken  as  implying  a  defi- 
nite chain  of  sequence,  nor  must  it  be  assumed  that  the 
mental  sexual  characters  either  determine  the  bodily  charac- 
ters or  are  determined  by  them  in  some  causal  nexus.  The 
classification  relates  only  to  the  strength  of  the  exciting 
influence  on  the  other  sex,  to  the  order  in  time  in  which 
this  influence  is  exerted,  and  to  the  degree  of  certainty  with 
which  the  extent  of  the  influence  may  be  predicted.^ 

Study  of  secondary  sexual  characters  is  bound  up  with 
consideration  of  the  eflfect  of  internal  secretions  of  the 
genital  glands  on  general  metabolism.  The  relation  of  this 
influence  or  its  absence  (as  in  the  case  of  artificially  cas- 
trated animals)  has  been  traced  out  in  the  degree  of  de- 
velopment of  the  secondary  characters.  The  internal 
secretions,  however,  undoubtedly  have  an  influence  on  all 
the  cells  of  the  body.  This  is  clearly  shown  by  the  changes 
which  occur  at  puberty  in  all  parts  of  the  body,  and  not  only 
in  the  s  ;■-  of  the  secondary  sexual  characters.  As  a  matter 
of  fact,  !  internal  secretions  of  all  the  glands  must  be 
regard"(^  r     iffecting  all  the  tissues. 

The  inter'ial  secretions  of  the  genital  glands  must  be 
regarded  as  completing  the  sexuality  of  the  individual. 
Every  eel'  must  be  considered  as  possessing  an  original 
sexuality,  10  which  the  influence  of  the  internal  secretion  in 


i6  SEX  AND  CHARACTER 

sufficient  quantity  is  the  final  determining  condition  under 
the  influence  of  which  the  cell  acquires  its  final  determinate 
character  as  male  or  female. 

The  genital  glands  are  the  organs  in  which  the  sex  of  the 
individual  is  most  obvious,  and  in  the  component  cells  of 
which  it  is  most  conspicuously  visible.  At  the  same  time  it 
must  be  noted  that  the  distinguishing  characters  of  the 
species,  race  and  family  to  which  an  organism  belongs  are 
also  best  marked  in  the  genital  cells.  Just  as  Steenstrup,  on 
the  one  hand,  was  right  in  teaching  that  sex  extends  all  over 
the  body  and  is  not  confined  to  the  genital  organs,  so,  on 
the  other  hand,  Naegeli,  de  Vries,  Oskar  Hertwig  and  others 
have  propounded  the  important  theory,  and  supported  it 
by  weighty  arguments,  that  every  cell  in  a  multi-cellular 
organism  possesses  a  combination  of  the  characters  of  its 
species  and  race,  but  that  these  characters  are,  as  it  were, 
specially  condensed  in  the  sexual  cells.  Probably  this  view 
of  the  case  will  come  to  be  accepted  by  all  investigators, 
since  every  living  being  owes  its  origin  to  the  cleavage  and 
multiplication  of  a  single  cell. 

Many  phenomena,  amongst  which  may  be  noticed 
specially  experiments  on  the  regeneration  of  lost  parts  and 
investigations  into  the  chemical  differences  between  the 
corresponding  tissues  of  nearly  allied  animals,  have  led  the 
investigators  to  whom  I  have  just  referred  to  conceive  the 
existence  of  an  "  Idioplasm,"  which  is  the  bearer  of  the 
specific  characters,  and  which  exists  in  all  the  cells  of  a 
multi-cellular  animal,  quite  apart  from  the  purposes  of  re- 
production. In  a  similar  fashion  I  have  been  led  to  the 
conception  of  an  "  Arrhenoplasm "  (male  plasm)  and  a 
"  Thelyplasm  "  (female  plasm)  as  the  two  modes  in  which 
the  idioplasm  of  every  bisexual  organism  may  appear,  and 
which  are  to  be  considered,  because  of  reasons  which  I 
shall  explain,  as  ideal  conditions  between  which  the  actual 
conditions  always  lie.  Actually  existing  protoplasm  is  to  be 
thought  of  as  moving  from  an  ideal  arrhenoplasm  through 
a  real  or  imaginary  indifferent  condition  (true  hermaphro- 
ditism)  towards  a  protoplasm  that  approaches,  but  never 


MALE  AND  FEMALE  PLASMAS  17 

actually  reaches,  an  ideal  thelyplasm.  This  conception 
brings  to  a  point  what  I  have  been  trying  to  say.  I  apolo- 
gise for  the  new  terms,  but  they  are  more  than  devices  to 
call  attention  to  a  new  idea. 

The  proof  that  every  single  organ,  and  further,  that  every 
single  cell  possesses  a  sexuality  lying  somewhere  between 
arrhenoplasm  and  thelyplasm,  and  further,  that  every  cell 
received  an  original  sexual  endowment  definite  in  kind  and 
degree,  is  to  be  found  in  the  fact  that  even  in  the  same 
organism  the  different  cells  do  not  always  possess  their 
sexuality  identical  in  kind  and  degree.  In  fact  each  cell  of 
a  body  neither  contains  the  same  proportion  of  M  and 
W  nor  is  at  the  same  approximation  to  arrhenoplasm  or 
thelyplasm  ;  similar  cells  of  the  same  body  may  indeed  lie 
on  different  sides  of  the  sexually  neutral  point.  If,  instead 
of  writing  "masculinity"  and  "femininity"  at  length,  we 
choose  signs  to  express  these,  and  without  any  malicious 
intention  choose  the  positive  sign  (  +  )  for  M  and  the 
negative  (  —  )  for  W,  then  our  proposition  may  be  ex- 
pressed as  follows  :  The  sexuality  of  the  different  cells  of 
the  same  organism  differs  not  only  in  absolute  quantity  but 
is  to  be  expressed  by  a  different  sign.  There  are  many  men 
with  a  poor  growth  of  beard  and  a  weak  muscular  develop- 
ment who  are  otherwise  t)^ically  males  ;  and  so  also  many 
women  with  badly  developed  breasts  are  otherwise  typically 
womanly.  There  are  womanish  men  with  strong  beards 
and  masculine  women  with  abnormally  short  hair  who 
none  the  less  possess  well-developed  breasts  and  broad 
pelves.  I  know  several  men  who  have  the  upper  part  of 
the  thigh  of  a  female  with  a  normally  male  under  part,  and 
some  with  the  right  hip  of  a  male  and  the  left  of  a  female. 
In  most  cases  these  local  variations  of  the  sexual  character 
affect  both  sides  of  the  body,  although  of  course  it  is  only  in 
ideal  bodies  that  there  is  complete  symmetry  about  the 
middle  line.  The  degree  to  which  sexuality  displays  itself, 
however,  as,  for  instance,  in  the  growth  of  hair,  is  very  often 
unsymmetrical.  This  want  of  uniformity  (and  the  sexual 
manifestations  never  show  complete  uniformity)  can  hardly 

B 


1 8  SEX  AND  CHARACTER 

depend  on  differences  of  the  internal  secretion  ;  for  the 
blood  goes  to  all  the  organs,  having  in  it  the  same  amount 
of  the  internal  secretion;  although  different  organs  may 
receive  different  quantities  of  blood,  in  all  normal  cases  its 
quality  and  quantity  being  proportioned  to  the  needs  of  the 
part. 

Were  we  not  to  assume  as  the  cause  of  these  variations  the 
presence  of  a  sexual  determinant  generally  different  in  every 
cell  but  stable  from  its  earliest  embryonic  development,  then 
it  would  be  simple  to  describe  the  sexuality  of  any  individual 
by  estimating  how  far  its  sexual  glands  conformed  to  the 
normal  type  of  its  sex,  and  the  facts  would  be  much  simpler 
than  they  really  are.  Sexuality,  however,  cannot  be  regarded 
as  occurring  in  an  imaginary  normal  quantity  distributed 
equally  all  over  an  individual  so  that  the  sexual  character  of 
any  cell  would  be  a  measure  of  the  sexual  characters  of 
any  other  cells.  Whilst,  as  an  exception,  there  may  occur 
wide  differences  in  the  sexual  characters  of  different  cells 
or  organs  of  the  same  body,  still  as  a  rule  there  is  the  same 
specific  sexuality  for  all  the  cells.  In  fact  it  may  be  taken 
as  certain  that  an  approximation  to  a  complete  uniformity 
of  sexual  character  over  the  whole  body  is  much  more 
common  than  the  tendency  to  any  considerable  divergences 
amongst  the  different  organs  or  still  more  amongst  the 
different  cells.  How  far  these  possible  variations  may  go 
can  be  determined  only  by  the  investigation  of  individual 
cases. 

There  is  a  popular  view,  dating  back  to  Aristotle  and 
supported  by  many  doctors  and  zoologists,  that  the  castra- 
tion of  an  animal  is  followed  by  the  sudden  appearance  of 
the  characters  of  the  other  sex ;  if  the  gelding  of  a  male 
were  to  bring  about  the  appearance  of  female  characteristics 
then  doubt  would  be  thrown  on  the  existence  in  every  cell 
of  a  primordial  sexuality  independent  of  the  genital  glands. 
The  most  recent  experimental  results  of  Sellheim  and 
Foges,  however,  have  shown  that  the  type  of  a  gelded  male 
is  distinct  from  the  female  type,  that  gelding  does  not 
induce  the  feminine  character.     It  is  better  to  avoid  too 


MALE  AND  FEMALE  PLASMAS  19 

far-reaching  and  radical  conclusions  on  this  matter  ;  it  may 
be  that  a  second  latent  gland  of  the  other  sex  may  awake 
into  activity  and  sexually  dominate  the  deteriorating  organ- 
ism after  the  removal  or  atrophy  of  the  normal  gland. 
There  are  many  cases  (too  readily  interpreted  as  instances 
of  complete  assumption  of  the  male  character)  in  which 
after  the  involution  of  the  female  sexual  glands  at  the 
climacteric  the  secondary  sexual  characters  of  the  male  are 
acquired.  Instances  of  this  are  the  beard  of  the  human 
grandam,  the  occasional  appearance  of  short  antlers  in  old 
does,  or  of  a  cock's  plumage  in  an  old  hen.  But  such 
changes  are  practically  never  seen  except  in  association 
with  senile  decay  or  with  operative  interference. 

In  the  case  of  certain  crustacean  parasites  of  fish,  how- 
ever (the  genera  Cymothoa,  Anilocra  and  Nerocila  of  the 
family  Cytnothoidce),  the  changes  I  have  just  mentioned  are 
part  of  the  normal  life  history.  These  creatures  are  her- 
maphrodites of  a  peculiar  kind ;  the  male  and  female  organs 
co-exist  in  them  but  are  not  functional  at  the  same  period. 
A  sort  of  protandry  exists ;  each  individual  exercises  first 
the  functions  of  a  male  and  afterwards  those  of  the  female. 
During  the  time  of  their  activity  as  males  they  possess 
ordinary  male  reproductive  organs  which  are  cast  off  when 
the  female  genital  ducts  and  brood  organs  develop.  That 
similar  conditions  may  exist  in  man  has  been  shown  by 
those  cases  of  "eviratio"  and  "  effeminatio "  which  the 
sexual  pathology  of  the  old  age  of  men  has  brought  to 
light.  So  also  we  cannot  deny  altogether  the  actual  occur- 
rence of  a  certain  degree  of  effeminacy  when  the  crucial 
operation  of  extirpation  of  the  human  testes  has  been 
performed.*  On  the  other  hand,  the  fact  that  the  relation 
is  not  universal  or  inevitable,  that  the  castration  of  an 
individual  does  not  certainly  result  in  the  appearance  of  the 
characters  of  the  other  sex,  may  be  taken  as  a  proof  that 
it  is  necessary  to  assume  the  original  presence  through- 

*  So  also  in  the  opposite  case  ;  it  cannot  be  wholly  denied  that 
ovariotomy  is  followed  by  the  appearance  of  masculine  characters. 


20  SEX  AND  CHARACTER 

out  the  body  of  cells  determined  by  arrhenoplastn  or 
thelyplasm. 

The  possession  by  every  cell  of  primitive  sexuality  on 
which  the  secretion  of  the  sexual  glands  has  little  effect 
might  be  shown  further  by  consideration  of  the  effects  of 
grafting  male  genital  glands  on  female  organisms.  For  such 
an  experiment  to  be  accurate  it  would  be  necessary  that  the 
animal  from  which  the  testis  was  to  be  transplanted  should 
be  as  near  akin  as  possible  to  the  female  on  which  the  testis 
was  to  be  grafted,  as,  for  instance,  in  the  case  of  a  brother  and 
sister  ;  the  idioplasm  of  the  two  should  be  as  alike  as  possible. 
In  this  experiment  much  would  depend  on  limiting  the 
conditions  of  the  experiment  as  much  as  possible  so  that 
the  results  would  not  be  confused  by  conflicting  factors. 
Experiments  made  in  Vienna  have  shown  that  when  an 
exchange  of  the  ovaries  has  been  made  between  unrelated 
female  animals  (chosen  at  random)  the  atrophy  of  the 
ovaries  follows,  but  that  there  is  no  failure  of  the  secondary 
sexual  characters  {e.g.,  degeneration  of  the  mammae).  More- 
over, when  the  genital  glands  of  an  animal  are  removed  from 
their  natural  position  and  grafted  in  a  new  position  in  the 
same  animal  (so  that  it  still  retains  its  own  tissues)  the  full 
development  of  the  secondary  sexual  characters  goes  on 
precisely  as  if  there  had  been  no  interference,  at  least  in 
cases  where  the  operation  is  successful.  The  failure  of  the 
transplantation  of  ovaries  from  one  animal  to  another  may 
be  due  to  the  absence  of  family  relationship  between  the 
tissues ;  the  influence  of  the  idioplasm  probably  is  of  primary 
importance. 

These  experiments  closely  resemble  those  made  in  the 
transfusion  of  alien  blood.  It  is  a  practical  rule  with 
surgeons  that  when  a  dangerous  loss  of  blood  has  to  be 
made  good,  the  blood  required  for  transfusion  must  be 
obtained  from  an  individual  not  only  of  the  same  species 
and  family,  but  also  of  the  same  sex  as  that  of  the  patient. 
The  parallel  between  transfusion  and  transplantation  is  at 
once  evident.  If  I  am  correct  in  my  views,  when  surgeons 
seek  to  transfuse  blood,  instead  of  being  content  with  injec- 


MALE  AND  FEMALE  PLASMAS  21 

tions  of  normal  salt  solution  they  must  take  the  blood  not 
merely  from  one  of  the  same  species,  family  and  sex,  but 
of  a  similar  degree  of  masculinity  or  femininity. 

Experiments  on  transfusion  not  only  lend  support  to  my 
belief  in  the  existence  of  sex  characters  in  the  blood  cor- 
puscles, but  they  furnish  additional  explanations  of  the 
failure  of  experiments  in  grafting  ovaries  or  testis  on  indi- 
viduals of  the  opposite  sex.  The  internal  secretions  of  the 
genital  glands  are  operative  only  in  their  appropriate  en- 
t'ironment  of  arrhenoplasm  or  thelyplasm. 

In  this  connection,  I  may  say  a  word  as  to  the  curative 
value  of  organotherapy.  Although,  as  I  have  shown  to  be 
the  case,  the  transplantation  of  freshly  extirpated  genital 
glands  into  subjects  of  the  opposite  sex  has  no  effect,  it  does 
not  follow  that  the  injection  of  the  ovarian  secretion  into 
the  blood  of  a  male  might  not  have  a  most  injurious  effect. 
On  the  other  hand,  the  principle  of  organotherapy  has  been 
opposed  on  the  ground  that  organic  preparations  procured 
from  non-allied  species  could  not  possibly  be  expected  to 
yield  good  results.  It  is  more  than  likely  that  the  medical 
exponents  of  organotherapy  have  lost  many  valuable  dis- 
coveries in  healing  because  of  their  neglect  of  the  biological 
theory  of  idioplasm. 

The  theory  of  an  idioplasm,  the  presence  of  which  gives 
the  specific  race  characters  to  those  tissues  and  cells  which 
have  lost  the  reproductive  faculty,  is  by  no  means  generally 
accepted.  But  at  the  least  all  must  admit  that  the  race 
characters  are  collected  in  the  genital  glands,  and  that  if 
experiments  with  extracts  from  these  are  to  provide  more 
than  a  good  tonic,  the  nearest  possible  relationship  between 
the  animals  experimented  upon  must  be  observed.  Parallel 
experiments  might  be  made  as  to  the  effect  of  transplantation 
of  the  genital  glands  and  injections  of  their  extracts  on  two 
castrated  cocks  of  the  same  strain.  For  instance,  the  effects 
of  the  transplantation  of  the  testes  of  one  of  them  into  any 
other  part  of  its  own  body  or  peritoneal  cavity  or  into  any 
similar  part  of  the  other  cock  might  be  compared  with  the 
efifects  of  intravenous  injection  of  testis  extract  of  the  one  on 


22  SEX  AND  CHARACTER 

the  other.  Such  parallel  investigations  would  also  increase 
our  knowledge  as  to  the  most  suitable  media  and  quantities 
of  the  extracts.  It  is  also  to  be  desired,  from  the  theoretical 
point  of  view,  that  knowledge  may  be  gained  as  to  whether 
the  internal  secretion  of  the  genital  glands  enters  into 
chemical  union  with  the  protoplasm  of  the  cells  or  whether 
it  acts  as  a  physiological  stimulus  independent  of  the 
quantity  supplied.  So  far  we  know  nothing  that  would 
enable  us  to  come  to  a  definite  opinion  on  this  point. 

The  limited  influence  of  the  internal  secretions  of  the 
sexual  glands  in  formmg  the  sexual  characters  must  be 
realised  to  warrant  the  theory  of  a  primary,  generally  slight, 
difference  in  each  cell,  but  still  determinate  sexual  influence.* 
If  the  existence  of  distinct  graduations  of  these  primary 
characteristics  in  all  the  cells  and  tissues  can  be  recognised, 
there  follow  many  important  and  far-reaching  conclusions. 
The  individual  egg-cells  and  spermatozoa  may  be  found  to 
possess  different  degrees  of  maleness  and  femaleness,  not 
only  in  different  individuals,  but  in  the  ovaries  and  testes 
of  the  same  individual,  especially  at  different  times  ;  for 
instance,  the  spermatozoa  differ  in  size  and  activity.  We 
are  still  quite  ignorant  on  these  matters,  as  no  one  has 
worked  on  the  requisite  lines. 

It  is  extremely  interesting  to  recall  in  this  connection  that 
many  times  different  investigators  have  observed  in  the 
testes  of  amphibia  not  only  the  different  stages  in  the 
development  of  spermatozoa,  but  mature  eggs.  This  inter- 
pretation of  the  observations  was  at  first  disputed,  and  it 
was  suggested  that  the  presence  of  unusually  large  cells  in 
the  tubes  of  the  testes  had  given  rise  to  the  error,  but  the 
matter  has  now  been  fully  confirmed.  Moreover,  in  these 
Amphibia,  sexually  intermediate  conditions  are  very  common, 
and  this  should  lead  us  to  be  careful  in  making  statements 
as  to  the  uniform  presence  of  arrhenoplasm  or  thelyplasm 
in  a  body.     The  methods  of  assigning  sex  to  a  new-born 

*  The  existence  of  sexual  distinctions  before  puberty  shows  that 
the  power  of  the  internal  secretions  of  the  sexual  glands  does  not 
account  for  everything. 


MALE  AND  FEMALE  PLASMAS  23 

infant  seem  most  unsatisfactory  in  the  light  of  these 
facts.  If  the  child  is  observed  to  possess  a  male  organ,  even 
although  there  may  be  complete  epi-  or  hypo-spadism,  or  a 
double  failure  of  descent  of  the  testes,  it  is  at  once  described 
as  a  boy  and  is  henceforth  treated  as  one,  although  in  other 
parts  of  the  body,  for  instance  in  the  brain,  the  sexual 
determinant  may  be  much  nearer  thelyplasm  than  arrheno- 
plasm.  The  so>  »ner  a  more  exact  method  of  sex  discrimina- 
tion is  insisted  upon  the  better. 

As  a  result  of  these  long  mductions  and  deductions  we 
may  rest  assured  that  all  the  cells  possess  a  definite  primary 
sexual  determinant  which  mu-^t  not  be  assumed  to  be  alike 
or  nearly  alike  throughout  the  same  body.  Every  cell,  every 
cell-complex,  and  every  organ  have  their  distinctive  indices 
on  the  scale  between  thelyplasm  and  arrhenoplasm.  For 
the  exact  definition  of  the  sex,  an  estimation  of  the  indices 
over  the  whole  body  would  be  necessary.  I  should  be  con- 
tent to  bear  the  blame  of  all  the  theoretical  and  practical 
errors  in  this  book  did  I  believe  myself  to  have  made  the 
working  out  of  a  single  case  possible. 

Differences  in  the  primary  sexual  determinants,  together 
with  the  varying  internal  secretions  (which  differ  in  quantity 
and  quality  in  different  individuals)  produce  the  pheno- 
mena of  sexually  intermediate  forms.  Arrhenoplasm  and 
thelyplasm,  in  their  countless  modifications,  are  the  micro- 
scopic agencies  which,  in  co-operation  with  the  internal 
secretions,  give  rise  to  the  macroscopic  differences  cited  m 
the  last  chapter. 

If  the  correctness  of  the  conclusions  so  far  stated  maybe 
assumed,  the  necessity  is  at  once  evident  for  a  whole  series 
of  anatomical,  physiological,  histological  and  histo-chemical 
investigations  into  those  differences  between  male  and  female 
types,  in  the  structure  and  function  of  the  individual  organs 
by  which  tue  dowers  of  arrhenoplasm  and  thelyplasm  express 
themselves  in  the  tissues.  The  knowledge  we  possess  at  the 
present  time  on  these  matters  comes  from  the  study  o 
averages,  but  averages  fail  to  satisfy  the  modern  statistician, 
and  their  scientific  value  is  very  small.     Investigations  into 


24  SEX  AND  CHARACTER 

the  sex-differences  in  the  weight  of  the  brain,  for  instance, 
have  so  far  proved  very  little,  probably  because  no  care 
was  taken  to  choose  typical  conditions,  the  assignment  of 
sex  being  dependent  on  baptismal  certificates  or  on  super- 
ficial glances  at  the  outward  appearance.  As  if  every 
"  John  "  or  "  Mary "  were  representative  of  their  sexes 
because  they  had  been  dubbed  "  male  "  and  "  female  !  "  It 
would  have  been  well,  even  if  exact  physiological  data  were 
thought  unnecessary,  at  least  to  make  certain  as  to  a  few 
facts  as  to  the  general  condition  of  the  body,  which  might 
serve  as  guides  to  the  male  or  female  condition,  such  as,  for 
instance,  the  distance  between  the  great  trochanters,  the  iliac 
spines,  and  so  forth,  for  a  sexual  harmony  in  the  different 
parts  of  the  body  is  certainly  more  common  than  great 
sexual  divergence. 

This  source  of  error,  the  careless  acceptance  of  sexually 
intermediate  forms  as  representative  subjects  for  measure- 
ment, has  maimed  other  investigations  and  seriously  retarded 
the  attainment  of  genuine  and  useful  results.  Those,  for 
instance,  who  wish  to  speculate  about  the  cause  of  the 
superfluity  of  male  births  have  to  reckon  with  this  source  of 
error.  In  a  special  way  this  carelessness  will  revenge  itself 
on  those  who  are  investigating  the  ultimate  causes  that  de- 
termine sex.  Until  the  exact  degree  of  maleness  or  female- 
ness  of  all  the  living  individuals  of  the  group  on  which  he 
is  working  can  be  determined,  the  investigator  will  have 
reason  to  distrust  both  his  methods  and  his  hypotheses.  If 
he  classify  sexually  intermediate  forms,  for  instance,  accord- 
ing to  their  external  appearance,  as  has  been  done  hitherto, 
he  will  come  across  cases  which  fuller  investigation  would 
show  to  be  on  the  wrong  side  of  his  results,  whilst  other 
instances,  apparently  on  the  wrong  side,  would  right  them- 
selves. Without  the  conception  of  an  ideal  male  and  an 
ideal  female,  he  lacks  a  standard  according  to  which  to 
estimate  his  real  cases,  and  he  gropes  forward  to  a  super- 
ficial and  doubtful  conclusion.  Maupas,  for  instance,  who 
made  experiments  on  the  determination  of  sex  in  Hydatina 
senta,  a  Rotifer,  found  that  there  was  always  an  experimental 


MALE  AND  FEMALE  PLASMAS  25 

error  of  from  three  to  five  per  cent.  At  low  temperatures 
the  production  of  females  was  expected,  but  always  about 
the  above  proportion  of  males  appeared  ;  so  also  at  the 
higher  temperatures  a  similar  proportion  of  females 
appeared.  It  is  probable  that  this  error  was  due  to  sexually 
intermediate  stages,  arrhenoplasmic  females  at  the  high 
temperature,  thelyplastic  males  at  the  low  temperature. 
Where  the  problem  is  more  complicated,  as  in  the  case 
of  cattle,  to  say  nothing  of  human  beings,  the  process  of 
investigation  will  yield  still  less  harmonious  results,  and  the 
correction  of  the  interpretation  which  will  have  to  be  made 
by  allowing  for  the  disturbance  due  to  the  existence  of 
sexually  intermediate  forms  will  be  much  more  difficult. 

The  study  of  comparative  pathology  of  the  sexual  types  is 
as  necessary  as  their  morphology,  physiology  and  develop- 
ment. In  this  region  of  inquiry  as  elsewhere,  statistics 
would  yield  certain  results.  Diseases  manifestly  much  more 
abundant  in  one  sex  might  be  described  as  peculiar  to  or 
idiopathic  of  thelyplasm  or  arrhenoplasm.  Myxoedema,  for 
instance,  is  idiopathic  of  the  female,  hydrocele  of  the  male. 

But  no  statistics,  however  numerous  and  accurate,  can  be 
regarded  as  avoiding  a  source  of  theoretical  error  until  it 
has  been  shown  from  the  nature  of  any  particular  affection 
dealt  with  that  it  is  in  indissoluble,  functional  relation  with 
maleness  or  femaleness.  The  theory  of  such  associated 
diseases  must  supply  a  reason  why  they  occur  almost  ex- 
clusively in  the  one  sex,  that  is  to  say,  in  the  phrase  of  this 
treatise,  why  they  are  thelyplasmic  or  arrhenoplasmic. 


CHAPTER   III 

THE  LAWS  OF  SEXUAL  ATTRACTION 

Carmen : 

"  L'amour  est  un  oiseau  rebelle, 
Que  nul  ne  peut  apprivoiser  : 
Et  c'est  bien  en  vain  qu'on  I'appelle 
S'il  lui  convient  de  refuser. 
Rien  n'y  fait  ;  menace  ou  priere  : 
L'un  parle,  I'autre  se  tait ; 
Et  c'est  I'autre  que  je  prefere ; 
II  n'a  rien  dit,  mais  il  me  plait. 

L'amour  est  enfant  de  Boheme 
II  n'a  jamais  connu  de  loi." 

It  has  been  recognised  from  time  immemorial  that,  in  all 
forms  of  sexually  differentiated  life,  there  exists  an  attrac- 
tion between  males  and  females,  between  the  male  and 
the  female,  the  object  of  which  is  procreation.  But  as  the 
male  and  the  female  are  merely  abstract  conceptions  which 
never  appear  in  the  real  world,  we  cannot  speak  of  sexual 
attraction  as  a  simple  attempt  of  the  masculine  and  the 
feminine  to  come  together.  The  theory  which  I  am  develop- 
ing must  take  into  account  all  the  facts  of  sexual  relations  if 
it  is  to  be  complete  ;  indeed,  if  it  is  to  be  accepted  instead  of 
the  older  views,  it  must  give  a  better  interpretation  of  all 
these  sexual  phenomena.  My  recognition  of  the  fact  that  M 
and  F  (maleness  and  femaleness)  are  distributed  in  the  living 
world  in  every  possible  proportion  has  led  me  to  the  dis- 
covery of  an  unknown  natural  law,  of  a  law  not  yet  sus- 
pected by  any  philosopher,  a  law  of  sexual  attraction.    As 


THE  LAWS  Uf  SEXUAL  ATTRACTION    27 

observations  on  human  beings  first  led  me  to  my  results,  I. 
shall  begin  with  this  side  of  the  subject. 

Every  one  possesses  a  definite,  individual  taste  of  his  own 
with  regard  to  the  other  sex.  If  we  compare  the  portrait  of 
the  women  which  some  famous  man  has  been  known  to 
love,  we  shall  nearly  always  find  that  they  are  all  closely 
alike,  the  similarity  being  most  obvious  in  the  contour 
(more  precisely  in  the  "  figure  ")  or  in  the  face,  but  on  closer 
examination  being  found  to  extend  to  the  minutest  details, 
ad  unguem,  to  the  finger-tips.  It  is  precisely  the  same  with 
every  one  else.  So,  also,  every  girl  who  strongly  attracts  a 
man  recalls  to  him  the  other  girls  he  has  loved  before.'« 
We  see  another  side  of  the  same  phenomenon  when  we  re- 
call how  often  we  have  said  of  some  acquaintance  or 
another,  "  I  can't  imagine  how  that  type  of  woman 
pleases  him."  Darwin,  in  the  "  Descent  of  Man,"  collected 
many  instances  of  the  existence  of  this  individuality  of  the 
sexual  taste  amongst  animals,  and  I  shall  be  able  to  show 
that  there  are  analogous  phenomena  even  amongst  plants. 

(Sexual  attraction  is  nearly  always,  as  in  the  case  of  gravi- 
tation, reciprocal./  Where  there  appear  to  be  exceptions  to 
this  rule,  there  is  nearly  always  evidence  of  the  presence  of 
special  influences  which  have  been  capable  of  preventing 
the  direct  action  of  the  special  taste,  which  is  almost  always 
reciprocal,  or  which  have  left  an  unsatisfied  craving,  if  the 
direct  taste  were  not  allowed  its  play. 

The  common  saying,  "  Waiting  for  Mr.  Right,"  or  state- 
ments such  as  that  "  So-and-so  are  quite  unsuitable  for 
one  another,"  show  the  existence  of  an  obscure  presenti- 
ment of  the  fact  that  every  man  or  woman  possesses  certain 
individual  peculiarities  which  qualify  or  disqualify  him  or 
her  for  marriage  with  any  particular  member  of  the 
opposite  sex ;  and  that  this  man  cannot  be  substituted 
for  that,  or  this  woman  for  the  other  without  creating  a 
disharmony. 

It  is  a  common  personal  experience  that  certain  individuals 
of  the  opposite  sex  are  distasteful  to  us,  that  others  leave  us 
cold ;   whilst  others  again  may  stimulate   us  until,  at  last, 


28  SEX  AND  CHARACTER 

some  one  appears  who  seems  so  desirable  that  everything 
in  the  world  is  worthless  and  empty  compared  with  union 
with  such  a  one.  What  are  the  qualifications  of  that  per- 
son ?  What  are  his  or  her  peculiarities  ?  If  it  really  be  the 
case — and  I  think  it  is — that  every  male  type  has  its  female 
counterpart  with  regard  to  sexual  affinity,  it  looks  as  if  there 
were  some  definite  law.  What  is  this  law  ?  How  does  it 
act  ?  "  Like  poles  repel,  unlike  attract,"  was  what  I  was 
told  when,  already  armed  with  my  own  answer,  I  resolutely 
importuned  different  kinds  of  men  for  a  statement,  and  sub- 
mitted instances  to  their  power  of  generalisation.  The 
formula,  no  doubt,  is  true  in  a  limited  sense  and  for  a  cer- 
tain number  of  cases.  But  it  is  at  once  too  general  and  too 
vague  ;  it  would  be  applied  differently  by  different  persons, 
and  it  is  incapable  of  being  stated  in  mathematical  terms. 

This  book  does  not  claim  to  state  all  the  laws  of  sexual 
affinity,  for  there  are  many ;  nor  does  it  pretend  to  be  able 
to  tell  every  one  exactly  which  individual  of  the  opposite 
sex  will  best  suit  his  taste,  for  that  would  imply  a  complete 
knowledge  of  all  the  laws  in  question.  In  this  chapter 
only  one  of  these  laws  will  be  considered — the  law  which 
stands  in  organic  relation  to  the  rest  of  the  book.  I  am 
working  at  a  number  of  other  laws,  but  the  following  is 
that  to  which  I  have  given  most  investigation,  and  which 
is  most  elaborated.  In  criticising  this  work,  allowance  must 
be  made  for  the  incomplete  nature  of  the  material  conse- 
quent on  the  novelty  and  difficulty  of  the  subject. 

Fortunately  it  is  not  necessary  for  me  to  cite  at  length 
either  the  facts  from  which  I  originally  derived  this  law 
of  sexual  affinity  or  to  set  out  in  detail  the  evidence  I 
obtained  from  personal  statements.  I  asked  each  of  those 
who  helped  me,  to  make  out  his  own  case  first,  and  then 
to  carry  out  observations  in  his  circle  of  acquaintances. 
I  have  paid  special  attention  to  those  cases  which  have  been 
notice  and  remembered,  in  which  the  taste  of  a  friend  has 
not  been  understood,  or  appeared  not  to  be  present,  or  was 
different  from  that  of  the  observer.  The  minute  degree  of 
knowledge  of  the  external  form  of  the  human  body  which 


THE  LAWS  OF  SEXUAL  ATTRACTION     29 

is  necessary  for  the  investigation  is  possessed  by  every 
one. 

I  have  come  to  the  law  which  I  shall  now  formulate  by  a 
method  the  validity  of  which  I  shall  now  have  to  prove. 

The  law  runs  as  follows  :("For  true  sexual  union  it  is 
necessary  that  there  come  together  a  complete  male  (M) 
and  a  complete  female  (F),  even  although  in  different  cases 
the  M  and  F  are  distributed  between  the  two  individuals  in 
different  proportions.) 

The  law  may  be  expressed  otherwise  as  follows  : 

if  we  take  fx,  any  individual  regarded  in  the  ordinary  way 
as  a  male,  and  denote  his  real  sexual  constitution  as  M^u, 
so  many  parts  really  male,  plus  Wfx,  so  many  parts  really 
female  ;  if  we  also  take  a>,  any  individual  regarded  in  the 
ordinary  way  as  a  female,  and  denote  her  real  sexual  con- 
stitution as  W(u,  so  many  parts  really  female,  plus  Mw,  so 
many  parts  really  male ;  then,  if  there  be  complete  sexual 
affinity,  the  greatest  possible  sexual  attraction  between  the 
two  individuals,  jn  and  w, 

(i)  M/u  (the  truly  male  part  in  the  "male")  +  Mw 
(the  truly  male  part  in  the  "  female  ")  will  equal  a  con- 
stant quantity,  M,  the  ideal  male  ;  and 

(2)  Wfx  +  W(u  (the  ideal  female  parts  in  respectively 
the  "  male  "  and  the  "  female  ")  will  equal  a  second 
constant  quantity,  W,  the  ideal  female. 

This  statement  must  not  be  misunderstood.  Both  formulas 
refer  to  one  case,  to  a  single  sexual  relation,  the  second 
following  directly  from  the  first  and  adding  nothing  to  it,  as 
I  set  out  from  the  point  of  view  of  an  individual  possessing 
just  as  much  femaleness  as  he  lacks  of  maleness.  Were  he 
completely  male,  his  requisite  complement  would  be  a 
complete  female,  and  vice  versa.  If,  however,  he  is  com- 
posed of  a  definite  inheritance  of  maleness,  and  also  an 
inheritance  of  femaleness  (which  must  not  be  neglected), 
then,  to  complete  the  individual,  his  maleness  must  be  com- 
pleted to  make  a  unit ;  but  so  also  must  his  femaleness  be 
completed. 


30  SEX  AND  CHARACTER 

If;  for  instance,  an  individual  be  composed  thus  : 

[f  M 
ft  i  and 

Uw, 

then  the  best  sexual  complement  of  that  individual  will  be 
another  compound  as  follows  : 

[iM 
(t)  i  and 
if  W. 

It  can  be  seen  at  once  that  this  view  is  wider  in  its  reach 
than  the  common  statement  of  the  case.  That  male  and 
female,  as  sexual  types,  attract  each  other  is  only  one 
instance  of  my  general  law,  an  instance  in  which  an 
imaginary  individual, 

J  I  M 

^\o  W 
finds  its  complement  in  an  equally  imaginary  individual, 

(  o  M 

There  can  be  no  hesitation  in  admittin^j  the  existence  of 
definite,  individual  sexual  preferences,  and  such  an  admission 
carries  with  it  approval  of  the  necessity  of  mvestigating  the 
laws  of  the  preference,  and  its  relation  to  the  rest  of  the 
bodily  and  mental  characters  of  an  individual.  The  law,  as 
I  have  stated  it,  can  encounter  no  initial  sense  of  impossi- 
bility, and  is  contrary  neither  to  scientific  nor  common 
experience.  But  it  is  not  self-evident.  It  might  be  that  the 
law,  which  cannot  yet  be  regarded  as  fully  worked  out, 
might  run  as  follows  : 

M/i  —  Mfü  =  a  constant  ; 

that  is  to  say,  it  may  be  the  difference  between  the  degrees 
of  masculinity  and  not  the  sum  of  the  degrees  of  ma-;cu- 
linity  that  is  a  constant  quality,  so  that  the  most  masculine 
man  would  stand  just  as  far  removed  from  his  complement 


THE  LAWS  OF  SEXUAL  ATTRACTION    31 

(who  in  this  case  would  he  nearly  midway  between  mascu- 
hnity  and  femininity)  as  the  most  feminine  man  would  be 
removed  from  his  complement  who  would  be  near  the 
extreme  of  femininity.  Althouj^h,  as  I  have  said,  this  is 
conceivable,  it  is  not  borne  oui  by  experience.  Recognising 
that  we  have  to  do  here  witli  an  empirical  law,  and  trying 
to  observe  a  wise  scientilic  re-.traint,  we  shall  do  well  to 
avoid  speaking  as  if  there  were  any  "  force  "  pulling  the 
two  individuals  together  as  if  they  were  puppets  ;  the  law  is 
no  more  than  the  statement  tliat  an  identicnl  relation  can 
be  made  out  in  each  case  of  maximum  sexual  attraction. 
We  are  dealing,  in  fact,  with  what  Ostwald  termed  an 
*' invariant"  and  Avenarius  a  "  multiponible  ";  and  this  is 
the  constant  sum  formed  by  the  total  masculinity  and  the 
total  femininity  in  all  cases  where  a  pair  of  living  beings 
come  together  with  the  maximum  sexual  attraction. 

In  this  matter  we  may  neglect  altogether  the  so-called 
aesthetic  factor,  the  stimulus  of  beauty.  For  does  it  not 
frequently  happen  that  one  man  is  completely  captivated  by 
a  particular  woman  and  raves  about  her  beauty,  whilst 
another,  who  is  not  the  sexual  complement  of  the  woman 
in  question,  cannot  imagine  what  his  friend  sees  in  her  to 
admire.  (Without  discussing  the  laws  of  aesthetics  or 
attempting  to  gather  together  examples  of  relative  values, 
it  may  readily  be  admitted  that  a  man  may  consider  a 
woman  beautiful  who,  from  tlie  aesthetic  standpoint,  is  not 
merely  indifferent  but  actually  ugly,  that  in  fact  pure 
aesthetics  deal  not  with  absolute  beauty,  but  merely  with 
conceptions  of  beauty  from  which  the  sexual  factor  has 
been  eliminatedJ 

I  have  myseh  worked  out  the  law  in,  at  the  lowest,  many 
hundred  cases,  and  I  have  found  that  the  exceptions  were 
only  apparent.  Almost  every  couple  one  meets  in  the 
street  furnishes  a  new  proof.  The  exceptions  were  specially 
instructive,  as  they  not  only  suggested  but  led  to  the  investi- 
gation of  other  laws  of  sexuality.  (l  myself  made  special 
investigations  in  the  followmg  way.  I  obtained  a  set  of 
photographs  of  aesthetically  beautiful  women  of  blameless 


32  SEX  AND  CHARACTER 

character,  each  of  which  was  a  good  example  of  some 
definite  proportion  of  femininity,  and  I  asked  a  number  of 
my  friends  to  inspect  these  and  select  the  most  beautiful. 
The  selection  made  was  invariably  that  which  I  had  pre- 
dicted. With  other  male  friends,  who  knew  on  what  I  was 
engaged,  I  set  about  in  another  fashion.  They  provided 
me  with  photographs  from  amongst  which  I  was  to  choose 
the  one  I  should  expect  them  to  think  most  beautiful. 
Here,  too,  1  was  uniformly  successful.  With  others,  I  was 
able  to  describe  most  accurately  their  ideal  of  the  opposite 
sex,  independently  of  any  suggestions  unconsciously  given 
by  them,  often  in  minuter  detail  than  they  had  realised. 
Sometimes,  too,  I  was  able  to  point  out  to  them,  for  the 
first  time,  the  qualities  that  repelled  them  in  individuals  of 
the  opposite  sex,  although  for  the  most  part  men  realise 
more  readily  the  characters  that  repel  them  than  the 
characters  that  attract  them./ 

I  believe  that  with  a  little  practice  any  one  could  readily 
acquire  and  exercise  this  art  on  any  circle  of  friends.  A 
knowledge  of  other  laws  of  sexual  affinity  would  be  of  great 
importance.  A  number  of  special  constants  might  be  taken 
as  tests  of  the  existence  of  complementary  individuals.  For 
instance,  the  law  might  be  caricatured  so  as  to  require  that 
the  sum  of  the  length  of  the  hairs  of  any  two  perfect  lovers 
should  always  be  the  same.  But,  as  I  have  already  shown 
in  chapter  ii.,  this  result  is  not  to  be  expected,  because 
all  the  organs  of  the  same  body  do  not  necessarily  possess 
the  same  degree  of  maleness  or  femaleness.  Such  heuristic 
rules  would  soon  multiply  and  bring  the  whole  subject  into 
ridicule,  and  I  shall  therefore  abstain  from  further  sugges- 
tions of  the  kind. 

I  do  not  deny  that  my  exposition  of  the  law  is  somewhat 
dogmatical  and  lacks  confirmation  by  exact  detail.  But  I  am 
not  so  anxious  to  claim  finished  results  as  to  incite  others 
to  the  study,  the  more  so  as  the  means  for  scientific  investi- 
gations are  lacking  in  my  own  case.  But  even  if  much 
remains  theoretical,  I  hope  that  I  shall  have  firmly  riveted 
the  chief  beams  in  my  edifice  of  theory  by  showing  how  it 


THE  LAWS  OF  SEXUAL  ATTRACTION    33 

explains  much  that  hitherto  has  found  no  explanation,  and 
so  shall  have,  in  a  fashion,  proved  it  retrospectively  by 
ihowing  how  much  it  would  explain  if  it  were  true. 

A  most  remarkable  confirmation  of  my  law  may  be  found 
in  the  vegetable  kingdom,  in  a  group  of  facts  hitherto 
regarded  as  isolated  and  to  be  so  strange  as  to  have  no 
parallel.  Every  botanist  must  have  guessed  already  that  I 
have  in  mind  the  phenomena  of  heterostylism,  first  discovered 
by  Persoon,  then  described  by  Darwin  and  named  by  Hilde- 
brand.  Many  Dicotyledons,  and  a  few  Monocotyledons,  for 
instance,  species  of  Primulaceae  and  Geraneaceae  and  many 
Rubiaceas,  phanerogams  in  the  flowers  of  which  both  the 
pollen  and  the  stigma  are  functional,  although  only  in  cross- 
fertilisation,  so  that  the  flowers  are  hermaphrodite  in  struc- 
ture but  unisexual  physiologically,  display  the  peculiarity 
that  in  different  individuals  the  stamens  and  the  stigma  have 
different  lengths.  The  individuals,  all  the  flowers  of  which 
have  long  styles  and  therefore  high  stigmas  and  short 
anthers,  are,  in  my  judgment,  the  more  female,  whilst  the 
individuals  with  short  styles  and  long  anthers  are  more  male. 
In  addition  to  such  dimorphic  plants,  there  are  also  trimor- 
phic  plants,  such  as  Lythriim  salicaria,  in  which  the  sexual 
organs  display  three  forms  differing  in  length.  There  are 
not  only  long-styled  and  short-styled  forms,  but  flowers  with 
styles  of  a  medium  length. 

Although  only  dimorphism  and  trimorphism  have  been 
recognised  in  the  books,  these  conditions  do  not  exhaust  the 
actual  complexities  of  structure.  Darwin  himself  pointed 
out  that  if  small  differences  were  taken  into  account,  no 
less  than  five  different  situations  of  the  anthers  could  be 
distinguished.  Alongside  such  plain  cases  of  discontinuity, 
of  the  separation  of  the  different  degrees  of  maleness  and 
femaleness  in  plainly  distinct  individuals,  there  are  also  cases 
in  which  the  different  degrees  grade  into  each  other  without 
breaks  in  the  series.  There  are  analogous  cases  of  discon- 
tinuity in  the  animal  kingdom,  although  they  have  always 
been  thought  of  as  unique  and  isolated  phenomena,  as  the 
parallel   with   heterostylism   had  not   been   suggested,     in 

c 


34  SEX  AND  CHARACTER 

several  genera  of  insects,  as,  for  instance,  some  Earwigs 
(Forficulce)  and  Lamellicorn  Beetles  {Lucanus  cervus),  the 
Sta.g-heet\e  (Dynasies  hercules),  and  Xylotrupes  gideon,  there  are 
some  males  in  which  the  antennae,  the  secondary  sexual 
characters  by  which  they  differ  most  markedly  from  the 
females,  are  extremely  long,  and  others  in  which  they  are 
very  short.  Bateson,  who  has  written  most  on  this  subject, 
distinguishes  the  two  forms  as  "  high  males "  and  "  low 
males."  It  is  true  that  a  continuous  series  of  intermediate 
forms  links  the  extreme  types,  but,  none  the  less,  the  vast 
majority  of  the  individuals  are  at  one  extreme  or  the  other. 
Unfortunately,  Bateson  did  not  investigate  the  relations 
between  these  different  types  of  males  and  the  females,  and 
so  it  is  not  known  if  there  be  female  types  with  special 
sexual  affinity  for  these  male  types.  Thus  these  observa- 
tions can  be  taken  only  as  a  morphological  parallel  to 
heterostylism  and  not  as  cases  of  the  law  of  complementary 
sexual  attraction. 

Heterostylous  plants  may  possibly  be  the  means  of  estab« 
lishing  my  view  that  the  law  of  sexual  complements  holds 
good  for  every  kind  of  living  thing.  Darwin  first,  and  after 
him  many  other  investigators  have  proved  that  in  heterosty- 
lous plants  fertilisation  has  the  best  results,  or,  indeed,  may 
be  possible  only  when  the  pollen  from  a  macrostylous  flower 
(a  flower  with  the  shortest  form  of  anthers  and  longest  pistil) 
falls  on  the  stigma  of  a  microstylous  blossom  (one  where 
the  pistil  is  the  shortest  possible  and  the  stamens  at  their 
greatest  length),  or  vice  versa.  In  other  words,  if  the 
best  result  is  to  be  attained  by  the  cross-fertilisation  of  a 
pair  of  flowers,  one  flower  with  a  long  pistil,  and  there- 
fore high  degree  of  femaleness,  and  short  stamens  must 
be  mated  with  another  possessing  a  correspondingly  short 
pistil,  and  so,  with  the  amount  of  femaleness  complementary 
to  the  first  flower,  and  with  long  stamens  complementary  to 
the  short  stamens  of  the  first  flower.  In  the  case  of  flowers 
where  there  are  three  pistil  lengths,  the  best  results  may  be 
expected  when  the  pollen  of  one  blossom  is  transmitted  to 
another  blossom  in  which  the  stigma  is  the  nearest  comple. 


THE  LAWS  OF  SEXUAL  ATTRACTION    35 

ment  of  the  stigma  of  the  flower  from  which  the  pollen 
came  ;  if  another  combination  is  made,  either  naturally  or 
by  artificial  fertilisation,  then,  if  a  result  follows  at  all,  the 
seedlings  are  scanty,  dwarfed  and  sometimes  infertile,  much 
as  when  hybrids  between  species  are  formed. 

It  is  to  be  noticed  that  the  authors  who  have  discussed 
heterostylism  are  not  satisfied  with  the  usual  explanation, 
which  is  that  the  insects  which  visit  the  flowers  carry  the 
pollen  at  different  relative  positions  on  their  bodies  corre- 
sponding to  the  different  lengths  of  the  sexual  organs  and 
so  produce  the  wonderful  result.  Darwin,  moreover,  admits 
that  bees  carry  all  sorts  of  pollen  on  every  part  of  their 
bodies  ;  so  that  it  has  still  to  be  made  clear  how  the  female 
organs  dusted  with  two  or  three  kinds  of  pollen  make  their 
choice  of  the  most  suitable.  The  supposition  of  a  power  of 
choice,  however  interesting  and  wonderful  it  is,  does  not 
account  for  the  bad  results  which  follow  artificial  dusting 
with  the  wrong  kind  of  pollen  (so-called  "  illegitimate 
fertilisation ").  The  theory  that  the  stigmas  can  only 
make  use  of,  or  are  capable  of  receiving  only  "  legitimate 
pollen  "  has  been  proved  by  Darwin  to  be  erroneous,  inas- 
much as  the  insects  which  act  as  fertilisers  certainly  some- 
times start  various  cross-breedings. 

The  hypothesis  that  the  reason  for  this  selective  retention 
on  the  part  of  individuals  is  a  special  quality,  deep-seated 
in  the  flowers  themselves,  seems  more  probable.  CWe  have 
probably  here  to  do  with  the  presence,  just  as  in  human 
beings,  of  a  maximum  degree  of  sexual  attraction  between 
individuals, one  of  which  possesses  just  as  much  femaleness  as 
the  other  possesses  maleness,  and  this  is  merely  another  mode 
of  stating  my  sexual  law.  >  The  probability  of  this  interpreta- 
tion is  increased  by  the  fact  that  in  the  short-styled,  long- 
anthered,  more  male  flowers,  the  pollen  grains  are  larger 
and  the  papillae  on  the  stigmas  are  smaller  than  the  corre- 
sponding parts  of  the  long-styled,  short-anthered,  more 
female  flowers.  Here  we  have  certainly  to  do  with  different 
degrees  of  maleness  and  femaleness.  These  circumstances 
supply  a  stong  corroboration  of  my  law  of  sexual  affinity, 


36  SEX  AND  CHARACTER 

that  in  the  vegetable  kingdom  as  well  as  in  the  animal 
kingdom  (I  shall  return  later  to  this  point)  fertilisation  has 
the  best  results  when  it  occurs  between  parents  with 
maximum  sexual  affinity.* 

Consideration  of  sexual  aversion  affords  the  readiest  proof 
that  the  law  holds  good  throughout  the  animal  kingdom.  I 
should  like  to  suggest  here  that  it  would  be  extremely 
interesting  to  make  observations  as  to  whether  the  larger, 
heavier  and  less  active  egg-cells  exert  a  special  attraction  on 
the  smaller  and  more  active  spermatozoa,  whilst  those  egg- 
cells  with  less  food-yolk  attract  more  strongly  the  larger  and 
less  active  spermatozoa.  It  may  be  the  case,  as  L.  Weill 
has  already  suggested  in  a  speculation  as  to  the  factors  that 
determine  sex,  that  there  is  a  correlation  between  the  rates 
of  motion  or  kinetic  energies  of  conjugating  sexual  cells. 
It  has  not  yet  been  determined,  although  indeed  it  would 
be  difficult  to  determine,  if  the  sexual  cells,  apart  from  the 
streams  and  eddies  of  their  fluid  medium,  approach  each 
other  with  equal  velocities  or  sometimes  display  special 
activity.     There  is  a  wide  field  for  investigation  here. 

^s  I  have  repeatedly  remarked,  my  law  is  not  the  only 
law  of  sexual  affinity,  otherwise,  no  doubt,  it  would  have 
been  discovered  long  ago.  Just  because  so  many  other 
factors  are  bound  up  with  it,t  because  another,  perhaps 
manv  other  laws  sometimes  overshadow  it,  cases  of  undis- 
turbed  action  of  sexual  affinity  are  rareJ  As  the  necessary 
investigations  have  not  yet  been  finished,  I  will  not  speak 
at  length  of  such  laws,  but  rather  by  way  of  illustration  I 
shall  refer  to  a  few  factors  which  as  yet  cannot  be  demon- 
strated mathematically. 

I  shall   begin   with  some   phenomena  which  are  pretty 

*  For  special  purposes  the  breeder,  whose  object  frequently  is  to 
modify  natural  tendencies,  will  often  disregard  this  law. 

f  In  speaking  of  the  sexual  taste  in  men  and  women,  one  thinks 
at  once  of  the  usual  but  not  invariable  preference  individuals  show 
for  a  particular  colour  of  hair.  It  would  certainly  seem  as  if  the 
reason  for  so  strongly  marked  a  preference  must  lie  deep  in  human 
nature. 


THE  LAWS  OF  SEXUAL  ATTRACTION     37 

generally  recognised.  Men  when  quite  young,  say  under 
twenty,  are  attracted  by  much  older  women  (say  those  of 
thirty-five  and  so  on),  whilst  men  of  thirty-five  are  attracted 
by  women  much  younger  than  themselves.  So  also,  on  the 
other  hand,  quite  young  girls  (sweet  seventeen)  generally 
prefer  much  older  men,  but,  later  in  life,  may  marry  strip- 
lings. The  whole  subject  deserves  close  attention  and  is 
both  popular  and  easily  noticed. 

In  spite  of  the  necessary  limitation  of  this  work  to  the 
consideration  of  a  single  law,  it  will  make  for  exactness  if  I 
try  to  state  the  formula  in  a  more  definite  fashion,  without 
the  deceptive  element  of  simplicity.  Even  without  being 
able  to  state  in  definite  quantities  the  other  factors  and  the 
co-operating  laws,  we  may  reach  a  satisfactory  exactness  by 
the  use  of  a  variable  factor. 

The  first  formula  was  only  an  abstract  general  statement 
of  what  is  common  to  all  cases  of  maximum  sexual  attrac- 
tion so  far  as  the  sexual  relation  is  governed  by  the  law.  I 
must  now  try  to  find  an  expression  for  the  strength  of  the 
sexual  affinity  in  any  conceivable  case,  an  expression  which, 
on  account  of  its  general  form,  can  be  used  to  describe  the 
relationship  between  any  two  living  beings,  even  if  these 
belong  to  different  species  or  to  the  same  sex. 

If 


f  a  M  '         (  ßW 


ß'  M 

(where  a,  a',  ß,  and  ß'  are  each  greater  than  o  and  less  than 
unity)  define  the  sexual  constitutions  of  any  two  living  beings 
between  which  there  is  an  attraction,  then  the  strength  of 
the  attraction  may  be  expressed  thus  : 


a-  ß 


where  /'  is  an  empirical  or  analytical  function  of  the 
period  during  which  it  is  possible  for  the  individuals  to  act 
upon  one  another,  what  may  be  called  the  "reaction-time"; 
whilst  K  is  the  variable  factor  in  which  we  place  all  the 


38  SEX  AND  CHARACTER 

known  and  unknown  laws  of  sexual  affinity,  and  which  also 
varies  with  the  degree  of  specific,  racial  and  family  relation- 
ship, and  with  the  health  and  absence  of  deformity  in  the 
two  individuals,  and  which,  finally,  will  become  smaller  as 
the  actual  spacial  distance  between  the  two  is  greater,  and 
which  can  be  determined  in  any  individual  case. 

When  in  this  formula  a  =  /3  A  must  be  infinity  ;  this  is  the 
extreme  case  ;  it  is  sexual  attraction  as  an  elemental  force, 
as  it  has  been  described  with  a  weird  mastercrait  by 
Lynkeus  in  the  novel  "Im  Postwangen."  Such  sexual 
attraction  is  as  much  a  natural  law  as  the  downward  growth 
of  a  rootlet  towards  the  earth,  or  the  migration  of  bacteria 
to  the  oxygen  at  the  edge  of  a  microscopic  cover-glass. 
But  it  takes  some  time  to  grow  accustomed  to  such  a  view. 
I  shall  refer  to  this  point  again. 

li  a  —  ß  has  its  maximun  value,  which  is  when  it  equals 
unity,  then  A  =  K  .  /. 

This  would  be  the  extreme  case  of  the  action  of  all  the 
sympathetic  and  antipathetic  relations  between  human  beings 
(leaving  out  of  account  social  relations  in  their  narrowest 
sense,  which  are  merely  the  safeguards  of  communities) 
which  are  not  included  in  the  l.iw  of  sexual  affinity.  As  K 
generally  increases  with  the  strength  of  congenital  relation- 
ship, A  has  a  greater  value  when  the  individuals  are  of  the 
same  nationality  than  when  they  belong  to  different  nation- 
alities. The  value  of  f  is  great  in  this  case,  and  onr;  can 
investigate  its  fluctuations,  as, for  instance,  when  two  domestic 
animals  of  different  species  are  in  association  ;  at  first  it 
usually  stands  for  violent  enmity,  or  fear  of  each  other  (and 
A  has  a  negative  value),  whilst  later  on  a  friendship  may 
come  about. 

When  K  =  o  in  the  formula 


_     K./' 


A  = 


then  A  =  o,  which  means  that  between  two  living  beings 
of  origin  too  remote  there  may  be  no  trace  of  sexual 
attraction. 


THE  LAWS  OF  SEXUAL  ATTRACTION    39 

The  provisions  of  the  criminal  statute-books,  however,  in 
reference  to  sodomy  and  bestiality  show  plainly  that  even 
in  the  case  of  very  remote  species  K  has  a  value  greater 
than  nothing.  The  formula  may  apply  to  two  individuals 
not  only  not  of  the  same  species,  but  even  not  of  the  same 
order. 

It  is  a  new  theory  that  the  union  of  male  and  female 
organisms  is  no  mere  matter  of  chance,  but  is  guided  by  a 
definite  law ;  and  the  actual  complexities  which  I  have 
merely  suggested  show  the  need  for  complete  investigation 
into  the  mysterious  nature  of  sexual  attraction. 

The  experiments  of  Wilhelm  Pfeffer  have  shown  that  the 
male  cells  of  many  cryptogams  are  naturally  attracted  not 
merely  by  the  female  cells,  but  also  by  substances  which  they 
have  come  in  contact  with  under  natural  conditions,  or  which 
have  been  nitroduced  to  them  experimentally,  in  the  latter 
case  the  substances  being  sometimes  of  a  kind  with  which 
they  could  not  possibly  have  come  in  contact,  except  under 
the  conditions  of  experiment.  Thus  the  male  cells  of  ferns 
are  attracted  not  only  by  the  malic  acid  secreted  naturally 
by  the  archegonia,  but  by  synthetically  prepared  malic  acid, 
whilst  the  male  cells  of  mosses  are  attracted  either  by  the 
natural  acid  of  the  female  cells  or  by  acid  prepared  from 
cane  sugar.  A  male  cell,  which,  we  know  not  how,  is 
influenced  by  the  degree  of  concentration  of  a  solution, 
moves  towards  the  most  concentrated  part  of  the  fluid. 
Pfeffer  named  such  movements  "  chemotactic  "  and  coined 
the  word  "  chemotropism  "  to  include  these  and  many  other 
asexual  cases  of  motion  stimulated  by  chemical  bodies. 
There  is  much  to  support  the  view  that  the  attraction 
exercised  by  females  on  males  which  perceive  them  at  a 
distance  by  sense  organs  is  to  be  regarded  as  analogous 
in  certain  respects  with  chemotropism. 

It  seems  highly  probable  that  chemotropism  is  also  the 
explanation  of  the  restless  and  persistent  energy  with  which 
for  days  together  the  mammalian  spermatozoa  seek  the 
entrance  to  the  uterus,  although  the  natural  current  pro- 
duced from  the  mucous  membrane  of  the  uterus  is  frorO 


40  SEX  AND  CHARACTER 

within  outwards.  The  spermatozoon,  in  spite  of  all  me- 
chanical and  other  hindrances,  makes  for  the  egg-cell  with 
an  almost  incredible  certainty.  In  this  connection  we  may 
call  to  mind  the  prodigious  journeys  made  by  many  fish  ; 
salmon  travel  for  months  together,  practically  without  taking 
any  food,  from  the  open  sea  to  the  sources  of  the  Rhine, 
against  the  current  of  the  river,  in  order  to  spawn  in  locali- 
ties that  are  safe  and  well  provided  with  food. 

I  have  recently  been  looking  at  the  beautiful  sketches 
which  P.  Falkenberg  has  made  of  the  processes  of  fertilisa- 
tion in  some  of  the  Mediterranean  seaweeds.  When  we 
speak  of  the  lines  of  force  between  the  opposite  poles  of 
magnets  we  are  dealing  with  a  force  no  more  natural  than 
that  which  irresistibly  attracts  the  spermatozoon  and  the 
egg-cell.  The  chief  jdifference  seems  to  be  that  in  the  case 
of  the  attraction  between  the  inorganic  substances,  strains 
are  set  up  in  the  media  between  the  two  poles,  whilst  in  the 
living  matter  the  forces  seem  confined  to  the  organisms 
themselves.  According  to  Falkenberg's  observations,  the 
spermatozoa,  in  moving  towards  the  egg-cells,  are  able  to 
overcome  the  force  which  otherwise  would  be  exercised 
upon  them  by  a  source  of  light.  The  sexual  attraction, 
the  chemotactic  force,  is  stronger  than  the  phototactic 
force. 

/when  a  union  has  taken  place  between  two  individuals 
wno,  according  to  my  formula,  are  not  adapted  to  each 
other,  if  later,  the  natural  complement  of  either  appears, 
the  inclination  to  desert  the  makeshift  at  once  asserts  itself, 
in  accordance  with  an  inevitable  law  of  nature.  A  divorce 
takes  place,  as  much  constitutional,  depending  on  the  nature 
of  things,  as  when,  if  iron  sulphate  and  caustic  potash  are 
brought  together,  the  SO4  ions  leave  the  iron  to  unite  with 
the  potassium.  When  in  nature  an  adjustment  of  such 
differences  of  potential  is  about  to  take  place,  he  who  would 
approve  or  disapprove  of  the  process  from  the  moral  point 
of  view  would  appear  to  most  to  play  a  ridiculous  partf 

This  is  the  fundamental  idea  in  Goethe's  "Wahlver- 
wandtschaften "    (Elective   Affinities),   and    in    the    fourth 


THE  LAWS  OF  SEXUAL  ATTRACTION    41 

cnapter  of  the  first  part  of  that  work  he  makes  it  the 
subject  of  a  playful  introduction  which  was  full  of  un- 
dreamed of  future  significance,  and  the  full  force  of  which 
he  was  fated  himself  to  experience  in  later  life.  I  must  con- 
fess to  being  proud  that  this  book  is  the  first  work  to  take  up 
his  ideas.  None  the  less,  it  is  as  little  my  intention  as  it  was 
the  intention  of  Goethe  to  advocate  divorce  ;  I  hope  only 
to  explain  it.  There  are  human  motives  which  indispose 
man  to  divorce  and  enable  him  to  withstand  it.  This  I  shall 
discuss  later  on.  The  physical  side  of  sex  in  man  is  less 
completely  ruled  by  natural  law  than  is  the  case  with  lower 
animals.  We  get  an  indication  of  this  in  the  fact  that  man 
is  sexual  throughout  the  year,  and  that  in  him  there  is  less 
trace  than  even  in  domestic  animals  of  the  existence  of  a 
special  spring  breeding-season. 

The  law  of  sexual  affinity  is  analogous  in  another  respect 
to  a  well-known  law  of  theoretical  chemistry,  although, 
indeed,  there  are  marked  differences.  The  violence  of  a 
chemical  reaction  is  proportionate  to  the  mass  of  the  sub- 
stances involved,  as,  for  instance,  a  stronger  acid  solution 
unites  with  a  stronger  basic  solution  with  greater  avidity, 
just  as  in  the  case  of  the  union  of  a  pair  of  living  beings 
with  strong  maleness  and  femaleness.  But  there  is  an 
essential  difference  between  the  living  process  and  the 
reaction  of  the  lifeless  chemical  substances.  The  living 
organism  is  not  homogeneous  and  isotropic  in  its  composi- 
tion ;  it  is  not  divisible  into  a  number  of  small  parts 
of  identical  properties.  The  difference  depends  on  the 
principle  of  individuality,  on  the  fact  that  every  living 
thing  is  an  individual,  and  that  its  individuality  is  essen- 
tially structural.  And  so  in  the  vital  process  it  is  not  as  in 
inorganic  chemistry  ;  there  is  no  possibility  of  a  larger  pro- 
portion forming  one  compound,  a  smaller  proportion  form- 
ing another.  The  organic  chemotropism,  moreover,  may 
be  negative.  In  certain  cases  the  value  of  A  may  result  in 
a  negative  quantity,  that  is  to  say,  the  sexual  attraction  may 
appear  in  the  form  of  sexual  repulsion.  It  is  true  that  in 
purely  chemical  processes  the  same  reaction  may  take  place 


42  SEX  AND  CHARACTER 

at  different  rates.  Taking,  however,  the  total  failure  of  some 
reaction  by  catalytic  interference  as  the  equivalent  of  a 
sexual  repulsion,  it  never  happens,  according  to  the  latest 
investigations  at  least,  that  the  interference  merely  induces 
the  reaction  after  a  longer  or  shorter  interval.  On  the  other 
hand,  it  happens  frequently  that  a  compound  which  is 
formed  at  one  temperature  breaks  up  at  another  tempera- 
ture. /Here  the  "  direction  "  of  the  reaction  is  a  function  of 
the  temperature,  as,  in  the  vital  process,  it  may  be  a  function 
of  time. 

In  the  value  of  the  factor  "  /,"  the  time  of  reaction,  a 
final  analogy  of  sexual  attraction  with  chemical  processes 
may  be  found,  if  we  are  willing  to  trace  the  comparison 
without  laying  too  much  stress  upon  ity  Consider  the 
formula  for  the  rapidity  of  the  reaction,  the  different 
degrees  of  rapidity  with  which  a  sexual  attraction  between 
two  individuals  is  established,  and  reflect  how  the  value  of 
"A"  varies  with  the  value  of  "  t."  However,  what  Kant 
termed  mathematical  vanity  must  not  tempt  us  to  read 
into  our  equations  complicated  and  difficult  processes,  the 
validity  of  which  is  uncertain.  All  that  can  be  implied  is 
simple  enough  ;  sensual  desire  increases  with  the  time 
during  which  two  individuals  are  in  propinquity  ;  if  they 
were  shut  up  together,  it  would  develop  if  there  were  no 
repulsion,  or  practically  no  repulsion  between  them,  in  the 
fashion  of  some  slow  chemical  process  which  takes  much 
time  before  its  result  is  visible.  Such  a  case  is  the  confi- 
dence with  which  it  is  said  of  a  marriage  arranged  without 
love,  "  Love  will  come  later ;  time  will  bring  it." 

It  is  plain  that  too  much  stress  must  not  be  laid  on  the 
analogy  between  sexual  affinity  and  purely  chemical  pro- 
cesses. None  the  less,  I  thought  it  illuminating  to  make  the 
comparison.  It  is  not  yet  quite  clear  if  the  sexual  attrac- 
tion is  to  be  ranked  with  the  "  tropisms,"  and  the  matter 
cannot  be  settled  without  going  beyond  mere  sexuality  to 
discuss  the  general  problem  of  erotics.  The  phenomena 
of  love  require  a  different  treatment,  and  I  sliall  return  to 
them  in  the  second  part  of  this  book.     None  the  less,  there 


THE  LAWS  OF  SEXUAL  ATTRACTION    43 

are  analogies  that  cannot  be  denied  when  human  attractions 
and  chemotropism  are  compared.  I  may  refer  as  an  instance 
to  the  relation  between  Edward  and  Ottilie  in  Goethe's 
"  Wahlverwandtschaften." 

Mention  of  Goethe's  romance  leads  naturally  to  a  dis- 
cussion of  the  marriage  problem,  and  I  may  here  give  a  few 
of  the  practical  inferences  which  would  seem  to  follow 
from  the  theoretical  considerations  of  this  chapter.  It  is 
clear  that  a  natural  law,  not  dissimilar  to  other  natural  laws, 
exists  with  regard  to  sexual  attraction  ;  this  law  shows  that, 
whilst  innumerable  gradations  of  sexuality  exist,  there  always 
may  be  found  pairs  of  beings  the  members  of  which  are 
almost  perfectly  adapted  to  one  another.  So  far,  marriage 
has  its  justification,  and,  from  the  standpoint  of  biology, 
free  love  is  condemned.  Monogamy,  however,  is  a  more 
difficult  problem,  the  solution  of  which  involves  other  con- 
siderations, such  as  periodicity,  to  which  I  shall  refer  later, 
and  the  change  of  the  sexual  taste  with  advancing  years. 
^A  second  conclusion  may  be  derived  from  heterostylism, 
especially  with  reference  to  the  fact  that  "  illegitimate  fertili- 
sation "  almost  invariably  produces  less  fertile  offspring. 
This  leads  to  the  consideration  that  amongst  other  forms  of 
life  the  strongest  and  healthiest  offspring  will  result  from 
unions  in  which  there  is  the  maximum  of  sexual  suitability. 
As  the  old  saying  has  it,  "  love-children  "  turn  out  to  be  the 
finest,  strongest,  and  most  vigorous  of  human  beings.  Those 
who  are  interested  in  the  improvement  of  mankind  must 
therefore,  on  purely  hygienic  grounds,  oppose  the  ordinary 
mercenary  marriages  of  convenience.} 

It  is  more  than  probable  that  the  law  of  sexual  attraction 
may  yield  useful  results  when  applied  to  the  breeding  of 
animals.  More  attention  will  have  to  be  given  to  the 
secondary  sexual  characters  of  the  animals  which  it  is 
proposed  to  mate.  The  artificial  methods  made  use  of  to 
secure  the  serving  of  mares  by  stallions  unattractive  to  them 
do  not  always  fail,  but  are  followed  by  indifferent  results. 
Probably  an  obvious  result  of  the  use  of  a  substituted 
stallion  in  impregnating  a  mare  is  the  extreme  nervousness 


44  SEX  AND  CHARACTER 

of  the  progeny,  which  must  be  treated  with  bromide  and 
other  drugs.  So,  also,  the  degeneration  of  modern  Jews 
may  be  traced  in  part  to  the  fact  that  amongst  them 
marriages  for  other  reasons  than  love  are  specially 
common. 

Amongst  the  many  fundamental  principles  established  by 
the  careful  observations  and  experiments  of  Darwin,  and 
since  confirmed  by  other  investigators,  is  the  fact  that  both 
very  closely  related  individuals,  and  those  whose  specific 
characters  are  too  unlike,  have  little  sexual  attraction  for 
each  other,  and  that  if  in  spite  of  this  sexual  union  occurs, 
the  offspring  usually  die  at  an  early  stage  or  are  very  feeble, 
or  are  practically  infertile.  So  also,  in  heterostylous  plants 
"  legitimate  fertilisation  "  brings  about  more  numerous  and 
vigorous  seeds  than  come  from  other  unions. 

^t  may  be  said  in  general  that  the  offspring  of  those 
parents  which  showed  the  greatest  sexual  attraction  succeed 
best^ 

Tnis  rule,  which  is  certainly  universal,  implies  the  correct, 
ness  of  a  conclusion  which  might  be  drawn  from  the  earlier 
part  of  this  book,  When  a  marriage  has  taken  place  and 
children  have  been  produced,  these  have  gained  nothing 
from  the  conquest  of  sexual  repulsion  by  the  parents,  for 
such  a  conquest  could  not  take  place  without  damage  to  the 
mental  and  bodily  characters  of  the  children  that  would 
come  of  it.  ^t  is  certain,  however,  that  many  childless 
marriages  have  been  loveless  marriages.  The  old  idea  that 
the  chance  of  conception  is  increased  where  there  is  a 
mutual  participation  in  the  sexual  act  is  closely  connected 
with  what  we  have  been  considering  as  to  the  greater 
intensity  of  the  sexual  attraction  between  two  comple- 
mentary individuals^ 


CHAPTER   IV 

HOMO-SEXUALITY  AND  PEDERASTY 

The  law  of  Sexual  Attraction  gives  the  long-sought-for 
explanation  of  sexual  inversion,  of  sexual  inclination 
towards  members  of  the  same  sex,  whether  or  no  that  be 
accompanied  by  aversion  from  members  of  the  opposite  sex. 
Without  reference  to  a  distinction  which  I  shall  deal  with 
later  on,  I  may  say  at  once  that  it  is  exceedingly  probable 
that,  in  all  cases  of  sexual  inversion,  there  will  be  found 
indications  of  the  anatomical  characters  of  the  other  sex. 
There  is  no  such  thing  as  a  genuine  "psycho-sexual  her- 
maphroditism "  ;  the  men  who  are  sexually  attracted  by 
men  have  outward  marks  of  effeminacy,  just  as  women  of  a 
similar  disposition  to  those  of  their  own  sex  exhibit  male 
characters.  That  this  should  be  so  is  quite  intelligible  if  we 
admit  the  close  parallelism  between  body  and  mind,  and 
further  light  is  thrown  upon  it  by  the  facts  explained  in  the 
second  chapter  of  this  book ;  the  facts  as  to  the  male  or 
female  principle  not  being  uniformly  present  all  over  the 
same  body,  but  distributed  in  different  amounts  in  different 
organs.  In  all  cases  of  sexual  inversion,  there  is  invariably 
an  anatomical  approximation  to  the  opposite  sex. 

Such  a  view  is  directly  opposed  to  that  of  those  who 
would  maintain  that  sexual  inversion  is  an  acquired 
character,  and  one  that  has  superseded  normal  sexual 
impulses.  Schrenk-Notzing,  Kraepelin,  and  Fere  are 
amongst  those  writers  who  have  urged  the  view  that  sexual 
inversion  is  an  acquired  habit,  the  result  of  abstinence  from 
normal  intercourse  and  particularly  induced  by  example. 
But  what  about  the  first  offender  ?     Did  the  god  Herma- 


46  SEX  AND  CHARACTER 

phroditos  teach  him  ?  It  might  equally  be  sought  to  prove  ; 
that  the  sexual  inclination  of  a  normal  man  for  a  normal 
woman  was  an  unnatural,  acquired  habit — a  habit,  as  some 
ancient  writers  have  suggested,  that  arose  from  some  acci- 
dental discovery  of  its  agreeable  nature.  Just  as  a  normal 
man  discovers  for  himself  what  a  woman  is,  so  also,  in  the 
case  of  a  sexual  "  invert "  the  attraction  exercised  on  him 
by  a  person  of  his  own  sex  is  a  normal  product  of  his 
development  from  his  birth.  Naturally  the  opportunity 
must  come  in  which  the  individual  may  put  in  practice  his 
desire  for  inverted  sexuality,  but  the  opportunity  will  be 
taken  only  when  his  natural  constitution  has  made  the  indi- 
vidual ready  for  it.  That  sexual  abstinence  (to  take  the 
second  supposed  cause  of  inversion)  should  result  in  any- 
thing more  than  masturbation  may  be  explained  by  the 
supposition  that  inversion  is  acquired,  but  that  it  should  be 
coveted  and  eagerly  sought  can  only  happen  when  the 
demand  for  it  is  rooted  in  the  constitution.  In  the  same 
fashion  normal  sexual  attraction  might  be  said  to  be  an 
acquired  character,  if  it  could  be  proved  definitely  that,  to 
fall  in  love,  a  normal  man  must  first  see  a  woman  or  a 
picture  of  a  woman.  Those  who  assert  that  sexual  inversion 
is  an  acquired  character,  are  making  a  merely  incidental  or 
accessory  factor  responsible  for  the  whole  constitution  of 
an  organism. 

There  is  little  reason  for  saying  that  sexual  inversion  is 
acquired,  and  there  is  just  as  little  for  regarding  it  as  in- 
herited from  parents  or  grandparents.     Such  an  assertion, 
it  is  true,  has  not  been  made,  and  seems  contrary  to  all 
experience ;  but  it  has  been  suggested  that  it  is  due  to  a 
neuropathic  diathesis,  and  that  general  constitutional  weak- 
ness is  to  be  found  in  the  descendants  of  those  who  have 
displayed   sexual   inversion.      In  fact  sexual  inversion  has 
usually  been  regarded  as  psycho-pathological,  as  a  symptom 
of  degeneration,  and  those  who  exhibit  it  have  been  con- 
sidered as  physically  unfit.     This  view,  however,  is  falling 
into   disrepute,   especially    as    Krafft-Ebing,    its    principal 
champion,  abandoned  it  in  the  later  editions  of  his  work. 


HOMO-SEXUALITY  AND  PEDERASTY     47 

None  the  less,  it  is  not  generally  recognised  that  sexual 
inverts  may  be  otherwise  perfectly  healthy,  and  with  regard 
to  other  social  matters  quite  normal.  When  they  have  been 
asked  if  they  would  have  wished  matters  to  be  different 
with  them  in  this  respect,  almost  invariably  they  answer  in 
the  negative. 

It  is  due  to  the  erroneous  conceptions  that  I  have  men- 
tioned that  homo-sexuality  has  not  been  considered  in 
relation  with  other  facts.  Let  those  who  regard  sexual 
inversion  as  pathological,  as  a  hideous  anomaly  of  mental 
development  (the  view  accepted  by  the  populace),  or  believe 
it  to  be  an  acquired  vice,  the  result  of  an  execrable  seduc- 
tion, remember  that  there  exist  all  transitional  stages 
reaching  from  the  most  masculine  male  to  the  most 
effeminate  male  and  so  on  to  the  sexual  invert,  the  false 
and  true  hermaphrodite  ;  and  then,  on  the  other  side,  suc- 
cessively through  the  sapphist  to  the  virago  and  so  on  until 
the  most  feminine  virgin  is  reached.  In  the  interpretation 
of  this  volume,  sexual  inverts  of  both  sexes  are  to  be  defined 
as  individuals  in  whom  the  factor  a  (see  page  8,  chap,  i.) 
is  very  nearly  0.5  and  so  is  practically  equal  to  a  ;  in  other 
words,  individuals  in  whom  there  is  as  much  maleness  as 
femaleness,  or  indeed  who,  although  reckoned  as  men,  may 
contain  an  excess  of  femaleness,  or  as  women  and  yet  be 
more  male  than  female.  Because  of  the  want  of  uniformity 
in  the  sexual  characters  of  the  body,  it  is  fairly  certain  that 
many  individuals  have  their  sex  assigned  them  on  account 
of  the  existence  of  the  primary  male  sexual  characteristic, 
even  although  there  may  be  delayed  descensus  iesHculorum,  or 
epi-  or  hypo-spadism,  or,  later  on,  absence  of  active  sperma- 
tozoa, or  even,  in  the  case  of  assignment  of  the  female  sex, 
absence  of  the  vagina,  and  thus  male  avocations  (such  as 
compulsory  military  service)  may  come  to  be  assigned  to 
those  in  whom  a  is  less  than  0.5  and  a  greater  than  0.5. 
The  sexual  complement  of  such  individuals  really  is  to  be 
found  on  their  own  side  of  the  sexual  line,  that  is  to  say,  on 
the  side  on  which  they  are  reckoned,  although  in  reality 
they  may  belong  to  the  other. 


48  SEX  AND  CHARACTER 

Moreover,  and  this  not  only  supports  my  view  but  can  b« 
explained  only  by  it,  there  are  no  inverts  who  are  completely 
sexually  inverted.  In  all  of  them  there  is  from  the  begin- 
ning an  inclination  to  both  sexes  ;  they  are,  in  fact,  bisexual. 
It  may  be  that  later  on  they  may  actively  encourage  a  slight 
leaning  towards  one  sex  or  the  other,  and  so  become 
practically  unisexual  either  in  the  normal  or  in  the  inverted 
sense,  or  surrounding  influence  may  bring  about  this  result 
for  them.  But  in  such  processes  the  fundamental  bisexuality 
is  never  obliterated  and  may  at  any  time  give  evidence  of 
its  suppressed  presence. 

Reference  has  often  been  made,  and  in  recent  years  has 
increasingly  been  made,  to  the  relation  between  homo- 
sexuality and  the  presence  of  bisexual  rudiments  in  the 
embryonic  stages  of  animals  and  plants.  What  is  new  in 
my  view  is  that  according  to  it,  homo-sexuality  cannot  be 
regarded  as  an  atavism  or  as  due  to  arrested  embryonic 
development,  or  incomplete  differentiation  of  sex  ;  it  cannot 
be  regarded  as  an  anomaly  of  rare  occurrence  interpolating 
itself  in  customary  complete  separation  of  the  sexes. 
Homo-sexuality  is  merely  the  sexual  condition  of  these 
intermediate  sexual  forms  that  stretch  from  one  ideally 
sexual  condition  to  the  other  sexual  condition.  In  my  view 
all  actual  organisms  have  both  homo-sexuality  and  hetero- 
sexual ity. 

That  the  rudiment  of  homo-sexuality,  in  however  weak  a 
form,  exists  in  every  human  being,  corresponding  to  the 
greater  or  smaller  development  of  the  characters  of  the 
opposite  sex,  is  proved  conclusively  from  the  fact  that  in 
the  adolescent  stage,  while  there  is  still  a  considerable 
amount  of  undifferentiated  sexuality,  and  before  the  internal 
secretions  have  exerted  their  stimulating  force,  passionate 
attachments  with  a  sensual  side  are  the  rule  amongst  boys 
as  well  as  amongst  girls. 

A  person  who  retains  from  that  age  onwards  a  marked 
tendency  to  "friendship"  with  a  person  of  his  own  sex 
must  have  a  strong  taint  of  the  other  sex  in  him.  Those, 
however,  are  still  more  obviously  intermediate  sexual  forms, 


HOMO-SEXUALITY  AND  PEDERASTY     49 

who,  after  association  with  both  sexes,  fail  to  have  aroused 
in  them  the  normal  passion  for  the  opposite  sex,  but  still 
endeavour  to  maintain  confidential,  devoted  affection  with 
those  of  their  own  sex. 

There  is  no  friendship  between  men  that  has  not  an  ele- 
ment of  sexuality  in  it,  however  little  accentuated  it  may  be 
in  the  nature  of  the  friendship,  and  however  painful  the 
idea  of  the  sexual  element  would  be.  But  it  is  enough  to 
remember  that  there  can  be  no  friendship  unless  there  has 
been  some  attraction  to  draw  the  men  together.  Much  of 
the  affection,  protection,  and  nepotism  between  men  is  due 
to  the  presence  of  unsuspected  sexual  compatibility. 

An  analogy  with  the  sexual  friendship  of  youth  may  be 
traced  in  the  case  of  old  men,  when,  for  instance,  with  the 
involution  following  old  age,  the  latent  amphisexuality  of 
man  appears.  This  may  be  the  reason  why  so  many  men 
of  fifty  years  and  upwards  are  guilty  of  indecency. 

Homo-sexuality  has  been  observed  amongst  animals  to 
a  considerable  extent.  F.  Karsch  has  made  a  wide,  if  not 
complete,  compilation  from  other  authors.  Unfortunately, 
practically  no  observations  were  made  as  to  the  grades  of 
maleness  or  femaleness  to  be  observed  in  such  cases.  But 
we  may  be  reasonably  certain  that  the  law  holds  good  in 
the  animal  world.  If  bulls  are  kept  apart  from  cows  for  a 
considerable  time, homo-sexual  acts  occur  amongst  them;  the 
most  female  are  the  first  to  become  corrupted,  the  others 
later,  some  perhaps  never.  (It  is  amongst  cattle  that  the 
greatest  number  of  sexually  intermediate  forms  have  been 
recorded.)  This  shows  that  the  tendency  was  latent  in 
them,  but  that  at  other  times  the  sexual  demand  was  satis- 
fied in  normal  fashion.  Cattle  in  captivity  behave  precisely 
as  prisoners  and  convicts  in  these  matters.  Animals  exhibit 
not  merely  onanism  (which  is  known  to  them  as  to  human 
beings),  but  also  homo-sexuality ;  and  this  fact,  together 
with  the  fact  that  sexually  intermediate  forms  are  known  to 
occur  amongst  them,  I  regard  as  strong  evidence  for  my 
law  of  sexual  attraction. 

Inverted  sexual  attraction,  then,  is  no  exception  to  my 

D 


50  SEX  AND  CHARACTER 

law  of  sexual  attraction,  but  is  merely  a  special  case  of 
it.  An  individual  who  is  half-man,  half-woman,  requires  as 
sexual  complement  a  being  similarly  equipped  with  a  share 
of  both  sexes  in  order  to  fulfil  the  requirements  of  the  law. 
This  explains  the  fact  that  sexual  inverts  usually  associate 
only  with  persons  of  similar  character,  and  rarely  admit  to 
intimacy  those  who  are  normal.  The  sexual  attraction  is 
mutual,  and  this  explains  why  sexual  inverts  so  readily 
recognise  each  other.  This  being  so,  the  normal  element 
in  human  society  has  very  little  idea  of  the  extent  to  which 
homo-sexuality  is  practised,  and  when  a  case  becomes  public 
property,  every  normal  young  profligate  thinks  that  he  has 
a  right  to  condemn  such  "  atrocities."  So  recently  as  the 
year  1900  a  professor  of  psychiatry  in  a  German  university 
urged  that  those  who  practised  homo-sexuality  should  be 
castrated. 

The  therapeutical  remedies  which  have  been  used  to 
combat  homo-sexuality,  in  cases  where  such  treatment  has 
been  attempted,  are  certainly  less  radical  than  the  advice  of 
the  professor  ;  but  they  serve  to  show  only  how  little  the 
nature  of  homo-sexuality  was  understood.  The  method  used 
at  present  is  hypnotism,  and  this  can  rest  only  on  the  theory 
that  homo-sexuality  is  an  acquired  character.  By  suggesting 
the  idea  of  the  female  form  and  of  normal  congress,  it  is 
sought  to  accustom  those  under  treatment  to  normal  rela- 
tions.    But  the  acknowledged  results  are  very  few. 

The  failure  is  to  be  expected  from  our  standpoint.  The 
hypnotiser  suggests  to  the  subject  the  image  of  a  "typical" 
woman,  ignorant  of  the  innate  differences  in  the  subject 
and  unaware  that  such  a  type  is  naturally  repulsive  to  him. 
And  as  the  normal  typical  woman  is  not  his  complement,  it 
is  fruitless  of  the  doctor  to  advise  the  services  of  any  casual 
Venus,  however  attractive,  to  complete  the  cure  of  a  man 
who  has  long  shunned  normal  intercourse.  If  our  formula 
were  used  to  discover  the  complement  of  the  male  invert,  it 
would  point  to  the  most  man-like  woman,  the  Lesbian  or 
Sapphist  type.  Probably  such  is  the  only  type  of  woman 
who  would  attract  the  sexual  invert  or  please  him.     If  a 


HOMO-SEXUALITY  AND  PEDERASTY     51 

cure  for  sexual  inversion  must  be  sought  because  it  cannot 
be  left  to  its  own  extinction,  then  this  theory  offers  the 
following  solution.  Sexual  inverts  must  be  brought  to 
sexual  inverts,  from  homo-sexualists  to  Sapphists,  each  in 
their  grades.  Knowledge  of  such  a  solution  should  lead  to 
repeal  of  the  ridiculous  laws  of  England,  Germany  and 
Austria  directed  against  homo-sexuality,  so  far  at  least  as 
to  make  the  punishments  the  lightest  possible.  In  the 
second  part  of  this  book  it  will  be  made  clear  why  both  the 
active  and  the  passive  parts  in  male  homo-sexuality  appear 
disgraceful,  although  the  desire  is  greater  than  in  the  case 
of  the  normal  relation  of  a  man  and  woman.  In  the  abstract 
there  is  no  ethical  difference  between  the  two. 

In  spite  of  all  the  present-day  clamour  about  the  existence 
of  different  rights  for  different  individualities,  there  is  only 
one  law  that  governs  mankind,  just  as  there  is  only  one 
logic  and  not  several  logics.  It  is  in  opposition  to  that  law, 
as  well  as  to  the  theory  of  punishment  according  to  which 
the  legal  offence,  not  the  moral  offence,  is  punished,  that 
we  forbid  the  homo-sexualist  to  carry  on  his  practices  whilst 
we  allow  the  hetero-sexualist  full  play,  so  long  as  both  avoid 
open  scandal.  Speaking  from  the  standpoint  of  a  purer 
state  of  humanity  and  of  a  criminal  law  untainted  by  the 
pedagogic  idea  of  punishment  as  a  deterrent,  the  only 
logical  and  rational  method  of  treatment  for  sexual  inverts 
would  be  to  allow  them  to  seek  and  obtain  what  they 
require  where  they  can,  that  is  to  say,  amongst  other 
inverts. 

My  theory  appears  to  me  quite  incontrovertible  and  con- 
clusive, and  to  afford  a  complete  explanation  of  the  entire 
set  of  phenomena.  The  exposition,  however,  must  now 
face  a  set  of  facts  which  appear  quite  opposed  to  it,  and 
which  seem  absolutely  to  contradict  my  reference  of  sexual 
inversion  to  the  existence  of  sexually  intermediate  types, 
and  my  explanation  of  the  law  governing  the  attraction  of 
these  types  for  each  other.  It  is  probably  the  case  that  my 
explanation  is  sufficient  for  all  female  sexual  inverts,fbut  it 
is  certainly  true  that  there  are  men  with  very  little  taint  oi 


52  SEX  AND  CHARACTER 

femaleness  about  them  who  yet  exert  a  very  strong  influ- 
ence on  members  of  their  own  sex,  a  stronger  influence 
than  that  of  other  men  who  may  have  more  femaleness 
— an  influence  which  can  be  exerted  even  on  very  male 
men,  and  an  influence  which,  finally,  often  appears  to  be 
much  greater  than  the  influence  any  woman  can  exert  on 
these  men.^  Albert  Moll  is  justified  in  saying  as  follows  : 
"There  exist  psycho-sexual  hermaphrodites  who  are  at- 
tracted by  members  of  both  sexes,  but  who  in  the  case  of 
each  sex  appear  to  care  only  for  the  characters  peculiar  to 
that  sex  ;  and,  on  the  other  hand,  there  are  also  psycho- 
sexual  (?)  hermaphrodites  who,  in  the  case  of  each  sex,  are 
attracted,  not  by  the  characteristics  peculiar  to  that  sex, 
but  by  those  which  are  either  sexually  indifferent  or  even 
antagonistic  to  the  sex  in  question."  Upon  this  distinction 
depends  the  difference  between  the  two  sets  of  phenomena 
indicated  in  the  title  of  this  chapter — Homo- sexuality  and 
Pederasty.  The  distinction  may  be  expressed  as  follows  : 
The  homo-sexualist  is  that  type  of  sexual  invert  who  prefers 
very  female  men  or  very  male  women,  in  accordance  with 
the  general  law  of  sexual  attraction.  The  pederast,  on  the 
other  hand,  may  be  attracted  either  by  very  male  men  or  by 
very  female  women,  but  in  the  latter  case  only  in  so  far 
as  he  is  not  pederastic.  Moreover,  his  inclination  for  the 
male  sex  is  stronger  than  for  the  female  sex,  and  is  more 
deeply  seated  in  his  nature.  The  origin  of  pederasty  is 
a  problem  in  itself  and  remains  unsolved  by  this  investi- 
gation. 


CHAPTER   V 

THE  SCIENCE   OF   CHARACTER   AND   THE 
SCIENCE  OF  FORM 

In  view  of  the  admitted  close  correspondence  between 
matter  and  mind,  we  may  expect  to  find  that  the  conception 
of  sexually  intermediate  forms,  if  applied  to  mental  facts, 
will  yield  a  rich  crop  of  results.  The  existence  of  a  female 
mental  type  and  a  male  mental  type  can  readily  be  imagined 
(and  the  quest  of  these  types  has  been  made  by  many 
investigators),  but  such  perfect  types  never  occur  as  actual 
individuals,  simply  because  in  the  mind,  as  in  the  body,  all 
sorts  of  sexually  intermediate  conditions  exist.  My  concep- 
tion will  also  be  of  great  service  in  helping  us  to  discriminate 
between  the  different  mental  qualities,  and  to  throw  some 
light  into  what  has  always  been  a  dark  corner  for  psycholo- 
gists— the  differences  between  different  individuals.  A  great 
step  will  be  made  if  we  are  able  to  supply  graded  categories 
for  the  mental  diathesis  of  individuals  ;  if  it  shall  cease  to 
be  scientific  to  say  that  the  character  of  an  individual  is 
merely  male  or  female  ;  but  if  we  can  make  a  measured 
judgment  and  say  that  such  and  such  an  one  is  so  many 
parts  male  and  so  many  parts  female.  Which  element  in 
any  particular  individual  has  done,  said,  or  thought  this  or 
the  other  ?  By  making  the  answer  to  such  a  question  pos- 
sible, we  shall  have  done  much  towards  the  definite  descrip- 
tion of  the  individual,  and  the  new  method  will  determine 
the  direction  of  future  investigation.  The  knowledge  of  the 
past,  which  set  out  from  conceptions  which  were  really 
confused  averages,  has  been  equally  far  from  reaching  the 
broadest  truths  as  from  searching  out  the  most  intimate, 


54  SEX  AND  CHARACTER 

detailed  knowledge.  This  failure  of  past  methods  gives  us 
hope  that  the  principle  of  sexually  intermediate  forms  may 
serve  as  the  foundation  of  a  scientific  study  of  character 
and  justifies  the  attempt  to  make  of  it  an  illuminating 
principle  for  the  psychology  of  individual  differences.  Its 
application  to  the  science  of  character,  which,  so  far,  has 
been  in  the  hands  of  merely  literary  authors,  and  is  from 
the  scientific  point  of  view  an  untouched  field,  is  to  be 
greeted  more  warmly  as  it  is  capable  of  being  used  quanti- 
tatively, so  that  we  venture  to  estimate  the  percentage  of 
maleness  and  femaleness  which  an  individual  possesses 
even  in  the  mental  qualities.  The  answer  to  this  question 
is  not  given  even  if  we  know  the  exact  anatomical  position 
of  an  organism  on  the  scale  stretching  from  male  to  female, 
although  as  a  matter  of  fact  congruity  between  bodily  and 
mental  sexuality  is  more  common  than  incongruity.  But 
we  must  remember  what  was  stated  in  chap.  ii.  as  to  the 
uneven  distribution  of  sexuality  over  the  body. 

The  proportion  of  the  male  to  the  female  principle  in  the 
same  human  being  must  not  be  assumed  to  be  a  constant 
quantity.  An  important  new  conclusion  must  be  taken 
into  account,  a  conclusion  which  is  necessary  to  the  right 
application  of  the  principle  which  clears  up  in  a  striking 
fashion  earlier  psychological  work.  The  fact  is  that  every 
human  being  varies  or  oscillates  between  the  maleness  and 
the  femaleness  of  his  constitution.  In  some  cases  these 
oscillations  are  abnormally  large,  in  other  cases  so  small  as 
to  escape  observation,  but  they  are  always  present,  and 
when  they  are  great  they  may  even  reveal  themselves  in 
the  outward  aspect  of  the  body.  Like  the  variations  in  the 
magnetism  of  the  earth,  these  sexual  oscillations  are  either 
regular  or  irregular.  The  regular  forms  are  sometimes 
minute  ;  for  instance,  many  men  feel  more  male  at  night. 
The  large  and  regular  oscillations  correspond  to  the  great 
divisions  of  organic  life  to  which  attention  is  only  now 
being  directed,  and  they  may  throw  light  upon  many 
puzzling  phenomena.  The  irregular  oscillations  probably 
depend  chiefly  upon  the  environment,  as  for  instance  on 


SCIENCE  OF  CHARACTER  AND  FORM     55 

che  sexuality  of  surrounding  human  beings.  They  may 
help  to  explain  some  curious  points  in  the  psychology  of  a 
crowd  which  have  not  yet  received  sufficient  attention. 

In  short,  bi-sexuality  cannot  be  properly  observed  in  a 
single  moment,  but  must  be  studied  through  successive 
periods  of  time.  This  time-element  in  psychological  differ- 
ences of  sexuality  may  be  regularly  periodic  or  not.  The 
swing  towards  one  pole  of  sexuality  may  be  greater  than 
the  following  swing  to  the  other  side.  Although  theoreti- 
cally possible,  it  seems  to  be  extremely  rare  for  the  swing 
to  the  male  side  to  be  exactly  equal  to  the  swing  towards 
the  female  side. 

It  may  be  admitted  in  principle,  before  proceeding  to 
detailed  investigation,  that  the  conception  of  sexually  inter- 
mediate forms  makes  possible  a  more  accurate  description 
of  individual  characters  in  so  far  as  it  aids  in  determining 
the  proportion  of  male  and  female  in  each  individual,  and 
of  measuring  the  oscillations  to  each  side  of  which  any 
individual  is  capable.  A  point  of  method  must  be  decided 
at  once,  as  upon  it  depends  the  course  the  investigation 
will  pursue.  Are  we  to  begin  by  an  empirical  investigation 
of  the  almost  innumerable  intermediate  conditions  in 
mental  sexuality,  or  are  we  to  set  out  with  the  abstract  sexual 
types,  the  ideal  psychological  man  and  woman,  and  then  in- 
vestigate deductively  how  far  such  ideal  pictures  correspond 
with  concrete  cases  ?  The  former  method  is  that  which  the 
development  of  psychological  knowledge  has  pursued;  ideals 
have  been  derived  from  facts,  sexual  types  constructed  from 
observation  of  the  manifold  complexity  of  nature  ;  it  would 
be  inductive  and  analytic.  The  latter  mode,  deductive  and 
synthetic,  is  more  in  accordance  with  formal  logic. 

I  have  been  unwilling  to  pursue  the  second  method  as 
fully  as  is  possible,  because  every  one  can  apply  for  himself 
to  concrete  facts  the  two  well-defined  extreme  types  ;  once 
it  is  understood  that  actual  individuals  are  mixtures  of  the 
types,  it  is  simple  to  appiy  theory  to  practice,  and  the  actual 
pursuit  of  detailed  cases  would  involve  much  repetition  and 
bring  little   theoretical   advantage.      The   second   method, 


56  SEX  AND  CHARACTER 

however,  is  impracticable.  The  collection  of  the  long  series 
of  details  from  which  the  inductions  would  be  made  would 
simply  weary  the  reader. 

In  the  first  or  biological  part  of  my  work,  I  give  little 
attention  to  the  extreme  types,  but  devote  myself  to  the 
fullest  investigation  of  the  intermediate  stages.  In  the 
second  part,  I  shall  endeavour  tv>  make  as  full  a  psycho- 
logical analysis  as  possible  of  the  characters  of  the  male 
and  female  types,  and  will  touch  only  lightly  on  concrete 
instances. 

I  shall  first  mention,  without  laying  too  much  stress  on 
them,  some  of  the  more  obvious  mental  characteristics  of 
the  intermediate  conditions. 

Womanish  men  are  usually  extremely  anxious  to  marry, 
at  least  (I  mention  this  to  prevent  misconception)  if  a 
sufficiently  brilliant  opportunity  offers  itself.  When  it  is 
possible,  they  nearly  always  marry  whilst  they  are  still  quite 
young.  It  is  especially  gratifying  to  them  to  get  as  wives 
famous  women,  artists  or  poets,  or  singers  and  actresses. 

Womanish  men  are  physically  lazier  than  other  men  in 
proportion  to  the  degree  of  their  womanishness.  There  are 
"  men  "  who  go  out  walking  with  the  sole  object  of  display- 
ing their  faces  like  the  faces  of  women,  hoping  that  they 
will  be  admired,  after  which  they  return  contentedly  home. 
The  ancient  "  Narcissus  "  was  a  prototype  of  such  persons. 
These  people  are  naturally  fastidious  about  the  dressing  of 
their  hair,  their  apparel,  shoes,  and  linen  ;  they  are  con- 
cerned as  to  their  personal  appearance  at  all  times,  and 
about  the  minutest  details  of  their  toilet.  They  are  con- 
scious of  every  glance  thrown  on  them  by  other  men,  and 
because  of  the  female  element  in  them,  they  are  coquettish 
in  gait  and  demeanour.  Viragoes,  on  the  other  hand,  fre- 
quently are  careless  about  their  toilet,  and  even  about  the 
personal  care  of  their  bodies;  they  take  less  time  in  dressing 
than  many  womanish  men.  The  dandyism  of  men  on  the 
one  hand,  and  much  of  what  is  called  the  emancipation  of 
women,  are  due  to  the  increase  in  the  numbers  of  these 
epicene  creatures,  and  not  merely  to  a  passing  fashion. 


SCIENCE  OF  CHARACTER  AND  FORM    57 

^Indeed,  if  one  inquires  why  anything  becomes  the  fashion 
it  will  be  found  that  there  is  a  true  cause  for  iy 

The  more  femaleness  a  woman  possesses  the  less  will  she 
understand  a  man,  and  the  sexual  characters  of  a  man  will 
have  the  greater  influence  on  her.  This  is  more  than  a 
mere  application  of  the  law  of  sexual  attraction,  as  I  have 
already  stated  it.  So  also  the  more  manly  a  man  is  the  less 
will  he  understand  women,  but  the  more  readily  be  in- 
fluenced by  them  as  women.  Those  men  who  claim  to 
understand  women  are  themselves  very  nearly  women. 
Womanish  men  often  know  how  to  treat  women  much 
better  than  manly  men.  Manly  men,  except  in  most  rare 
cases,  learn  how  to  deal  with  women  only  after  long  expe- 
rience, and  even  then  most  imperfectly. 

Although  I  have  been  touching  here  in  a  most  superficial 
way  on  what  are  no  more  than  tertiary  sexual  characters,  I 
wish  to  point  out  an  application  of  my  conclusions  to  peda- 
gogy. I  am  convinced  that  the  more  these  views  are 
understood  the  more  certainly  will  they  lead  to  an  indi- 
vidual treatment  in  education.  At  the  present  time  shoe- 
makers, who  make  shoes  to  measure,  deal  more  rationally 
with  individuals  than  our  teachers  and  schoolmasters  in 
their  application  of  moral  principles.  ^At  present  the 
sexually  intermediate  forms  of  individuals  (especially  on 
the  female  side)  are  treated  exactly  as  if  they  were  good 
examples  of  the  ideal  male  or  female  types.  There  is 
wanted  an  "  orthopaedic"  treatment  of  the  soul  instead  of 
the  torture  caused  by  the  appUcation  of  ready-made  con- 
ventional shapes.  The  present  system  stamps  out  much 
that  is  original,  uproots  much  that  is  truly  natural,  and 
distorts  much  into  artificial  and  unnatural  forms.y 

From  time  immemorial  there  have  been  only  two  systems 
of  education  ;  one  for  those  who  come  into  the  world  desig- 
nated by  one  set  of  characters  as  males,  and  another  for 
those  who  are  similarly  assumed  to  be  females.  Almost  at 
once  the  "boys"  and  the  "girls"  are  dressed  differently, 
learn  to  play  different  games,  go  through  different  courses 
of  instruction,  the  girls  being  put  to  stitching  and  so  forth. 


58  SEX  AND  CHARACTER 

The  intermediate  individuals  are  placed  at  a  great  disad- 
vantage. And  yet  the  instincts  natural  to  their  condition 
reveal  themselves  quickly  enough,  often  even  before  puberty. 
There  are  boys  who  like  to  play  with  dolls,  who  learn  to 
knit  and  sew  with  their  sisters,  and  who  are  pleased  to  be 
given  girls'  names.  There  are  girls  who  delight  in  the 
noisier  sports  of  their  brothers,  and  who  make  chums  and 
playmates  of  them.  After  puberty,  there  is  a  still  stronger 
display  of  the  innate  differences.  Manlike  women  wear  their 
hair  short,  affect  manly  dress,  study,  drink,  smoke,  are  fond  of 
mountaineering,  or  devote  themselves  passionately  to  sport. 
Womanish  men  grow  their  hair  long,  wear  corsets,  are 
experts  in  the  toilet  devices  of  women,  and  show  the 
greatest  readiness  to  become  friendly  and  intimate  w'th 
them,  preferring  their  society  to  that  of  men. 

Later  on,  the  different  laws  and  customs  to  which  the  so« 
called  sexes  are  subjected  press  them  as  by  a  vice  into 
distinctive  moulds.  The  proposals  which  should  follow 
from  my  conclusions  will  encounter  more  passive  resist- 
ance, I  fear,  in  the  case  of  girls  than  in  that  of  boys.  I 
must  here  contradict,  in  the  most  positive  fashion,  a  dogma 
that  is  authoritatively  and  widely  maintained  at  the  present 
time,  the  idea  that  all  women  are  alike,  that  no  individuals 
exist  amongst  women.  It  is  true  that  amongst  those  indi- 
viduals whose  constitutions  lie  nearer  the  female  side  than 
the  male  side,  the  differences  and  possibilities  are  not  so 
great  as  amongst  those  on  the  male  side  ;  the  greater  varia- 
bility of  males  is  true  not  only  for  the  human  race  but  for 
the  living  world,  and  is  related  to  the  principles  established 
by  Darwin.  None  the  less,  there  are  plenty  of  differences 
amongst  women.  The  psychological  origin  of  this  common 
error  depends  chiefly  on  a  fact  that  I  explained  in  chap,  iii., 
the  fact  that  every  man  in  his  life  becomes  intimate  only 
with  a  group  of  women  defined  by  his  own  constitution, 
and  so  naturally  he  finds  them  much  alike.  /For  the 
same  reason,  and  in  the  same  way,  one  may  often  hear  a 
woman  say  that  all  men  are  alike.  And  the  narrow  uniform 
view  about  men,  displayed  by  most  of  the  leaders  of  the 


SCIENCE  OF  CHARACTER  AND  FORM    59 

women's  rights  movement  depends  on  precisely  the  same 
cause./ 

It  is  clear  that  the  principle  of  the  existence  of  innu- 
merable individual  proportions  of  the  male  and  female 
principles  is  a  basis  of  the  study  of  character  which  must 
be  applied  in  any  rational  scheme  of  pedagogy. 

The  science  of  character  must  be  associated  with  some 
form  of  psychology  that  takes  into  account  some  theory  of 
the  real  existence  of  mental  phenomena  in  the  same  fashion 
that  anatomy  is  related  to  physiology.  And  so  it  is  necessary, 
quite  apart  from  theoretical  reasons,  to  attempt  to  pursue  a 
psychology  of  individual  differences.  This  attempt  will  be 
readily  enough  followed  by  those  who  believe  in  the  paral- 
lelism between  mind  and  matter,  for  they  will  see  in  psycho- 
logy no  more  than  the  physiology  of  the  central  nervous 
system,  and  Vv^ill  readily  admit  that  the  science  of  character 
must  be  a  sister  of  morphology.  As  a  matter  of  fact 
there  is  great  hope  that  in  future  characterology  and  mor- 
phology will  each  greatly  help  the  other.  The  principle  of 
sexually  intermediate  forms,  and  still  more  the  parallelism 
between  characterology  and  morphology  in  the  widest 
application,  make  us  look  forward  to  the  time  when  phy- 
siognomy will  take  its  honourable  place  amongst  the 
sciences,  a  place  which  so  many  have  attempted  to  gain 
for  it  but  as  yet  unsuccessfully. 

The  problem  of  physiognomy  is  the  problem  of  the  rela- 
tion between  the  static  mental  forces  and  the  static  bodily 
forces,  just  as  the  problem  of  physiological  psychology 
deals  with  the  dynamic  aspect  of  the  same  relations.  It  is 
a  great  error  in  method,  and  in  fact,  to  treat  the  study  of 
physiognomy,  because  of  its  difficulty,  as  impracticable. 
And  yet  this  is  the  attitude  of  contemporary  scientific 
circles,  unconsciously  perhaps  rather  than  consciously, 
but  occasionally  becoming  obvious,  as  for  instance  in 
the  case  of  the  attempt  of  von  Möbius  to  pursue  the 
work  of  Gall  with  regard  to  the  physiognomy  of  those  with 
a  natural  aptitude  for  mathematics.  ^If  it  be  possible,  and 
many  have  shown  that  it    is   possible,  to  judge  correctly 


/ 


6o  SEX  AND  CHARACTER 

much  of  the  character  of  an  individual  merely  from  the 
examination  of  his  external  appearance,  without  the  aid  of 
cross-examination  or  guessing,  it  cannot  be  impossible  to 
reduce  such  modes  of  observation  to  an  exact  method^)  There 
is  little  more  required  than  an  exact  study  of  the  expression 
of  the  characteristic  emotions  and  the  tracking  (to  use  a 
rough  analogy)  of  the  routes  of  the  cabled  passing  to  the 
speech  centres. 

None  the  less  it  will  be  long  before  official  science 
ceases  to  regard  the  study  of  physiognomy  as  illegitimate. 
Although  people  will  still  believe  in  the  parallelism  of  mind 
and  body,  they  will  continue  to  treat  the  physiognomist  as 
as  much  of  a  charlatan  as  until  quite  recently  the  hypnotist 
was  thought  to  be.  ^None  the  less,  all  mankind  at  least 
unconsciously,  and  intelligent  persons  consciously,  will 
continue  to  be  physiognomists,  people  will  continue  to 
judge  character  from  the  nose,  although  they  will  not  admit 
the  existence  of  a  science  of  physiognomy  J  and  the  portraits 
of  celebrated  men  and  of  murderers  will  continue  to  interest 
every  one. 

I  am  inclined  to  believe  that  the  assumption  of  a  univer- 
sally acquired  correspondence  between  mind  and  body  may 
be  a  hitherto  neglected  fundamental  function  of  our  mind. 
It  is  certainly  the  case  that  every  one  believes  in  physiog- 
nomy and  actually  practises  it.  The  principle  of  the  exist- 
ence of  a  definite  relation  between  mind  and  body  must  be 
accepted  as  an  illuminating  axiom  for  psychological  research, 
and  it  will  be  for  religion  and  metaphysics  to  work  out 
the  details  of  a  relationship  which  must  be  accepted  as 
existing. 

Whether  or  no  the  science  of  character  can  be  linked  with 
morphology,  it  will  be  valuable  not  only  to  these  sciences 
but  to  physiognomy  if  we  can  penetrate  a  little  deeper  into 
the  confusion  that  now  reigns  in  order  to  find  if  wrong 
methods  have  not  been  responsible  for  it.  I  hope  that 
the  attempt  I  am  about  to  make  will  lead  some  little 
way  into  the  labyrinth,  and  will  prove  to  be  of  general 
application. 


SCIENCE  OF  CHARACTER  AND  FORM    6i 

Some  men  are  fond  of  dogs  and  detest  cats  ;  others  are 
devoted  to  cats  and  dislike  dogs.  Inquiring  minds  have 
delighted  to  ask  in  such  cases,  Why  are  cats  attractive  to 
one  person,  dogs  to  another  ?     Why  ? 

1  do  not  think  that  this  is  the  most  fruitful  way  of  stating 
the  problem.  I  believe  it  to  be  more  important  to  ask  in 
what  other  respects  lovers  of  dogs  and  of  cats  differ  from 
one  another.  The  habit,  where  one  difference  has  been 
detected,  of  seeking  for  the  associated  differences,  will 
prove  extremely  useful  not  only  to  pure  morphology  and  to 
the  science  of  character,'(but  ultimately  to  physiognomy,  the 
meeting-point  of  the  two  science^  Aristotle  pointed  out 
long  ago  that  many  characteristics  of  animals  do  not  vary 
independently  of  each  other.  Later  on  Cuvier,  in  par- 
ticular, but  also  Geoffrey  St.  Hilaire  and  Darwin  made  a 
special  study  of  these  "  correlations."  Occasionally  the 
association  of  the  characters  is  easy  to  understand  on 
obvious  utilitarian  principles  ;  where  for  instance  the  ali- 
mentary canal  is  adapted  to  the  digestion  of  flesh,  the  jaws 
and  body  must  be  adapted  for  the  capture  of  the  prey.  But 
association  such  as  that  between  ruminant  stomachs  and 
the  presence  of  cloven  hoofs  and  of  horns  in  the  male,  or 
of  immunity  to  certain  poisons  with  particular  colouring  of 
the  hair,  or  among  domestic  pigeons  of  short  bills  with 
small  feet,  of  long  bills  with  large  feet,  or  in  cats  of  deafness 
with  white  fur  and  blue  eyes — such  are  extremely  difficult 
to  refer  to  a  single  purpose. 

I  do  not  in  the  least  mean  to  assert  that  science  must  be 
content  with  no  more  than  the  mere  discovery  of  correla- 
tions. Such  a  position  would  be  little  better  than  that  of  a 
person  who  was  satisfied  by  finding  out  that  the  placing  of 
a  penny  in  the  slot  of  a  particular  automatic  machine 
always  was  followed  by  the  release  of  a  box  of  matches.  It 
would  be  making  resignation  the  leading  principle  of  meta- 
physics. We  shall  get  a  good  deal  further  by  such  correla- 
tions, as,  for  instance,  that  of  long  hair  and  normal  ovaries ; 
but  these  are  within  the  sphere  of  physiology,  not  of 
morphology.     Probably  the  goal  of  an  ideal  morphology 


62  SEX  AND  CHARACTER 

could  be  reached  best  not  by  deductions  from  an  attempted 
synthesis  of  observations  on  all  the  animals  that  creep  on 
the  land  or  swim  in  the  sea  (in  the  fashion  of  collectors  of 
postage  stamps),  but  by  a  complete  study  of  a  few 
organisms.  Cuvier  by  a  kind  of  guess-work  used  to  re- 
construct an  entire  animal  from  a  single  bone :  full 
knowledge  would  enable  us  to  do  this  in  a  complete, 
definite,  qualitative  and  quantitative  fashion.  When  such  a 
knowledge  has  been  attained,  each  single  character  will  at 
once  define  and  limit  for  us  the  possibilities  of  the  other 
characters.  Such  a  true  and  logical  extension  of  the  prin- 
ciple of  correlation  in  morphology  is  really  an  application 
of  the  theory  of  functions  to  the  living  world.  It  would 
not  exclude  the  study  of  causation,  but  limit  it  to  its  proper 
sphere.  No  doubt  the  "causes"  of  the  correlations  of 
organisms  must  be  sought  for  in  the  idioplasm. 

The  possibility  of  applying  the  principle  of  correlated 
variation  to  psychology  depends  on  differential  psychology, 
the  study  of  psychological  variation.  I  believe,  moreover, 
that  a  combination  of  study  of  the  anatomical  "habit,"  and 
the  mental  characteristics  will  lead  to  a  statical  psycho- 
physics,  a  true  science  of  physiognomy.  The  rule  of 
investigation  in  all  the  three  sciences  will  have  to  be  that 
the  question  is  posed  as  follows ;  given  that  two  organisms 
are  known  to  differ  in  one  respect,  in  what  other  respects 
are  they  different  ?  This  will  be  the  golden  rule  of  dis- 
covery, and,  following  it,  we  shall  no  longer  lose  ourselves 
hopelessly  in  the  dark  maze  that  surrounds  the  answer  to 
the  question  "  Why  ?  "  As  soon  as  we  are  informed  as  to 
one  difference,  we  must  diligently  seek  out  the  others,  and 
the  mere  putting  of  the  question  in  this  form  will  directly 
bring  about  many  discoveries. 

The  conscious  pursuit  of  this  rule  of  investigation  will  be 
particularly  valuable  in  dealing  with  problems  of  the  mind. 
Mental  actions  are  not  co-existent  in  the  sense  of  physical 
characters,  and  it  has  been  only  by  accidental  and  fortunate 
chances,  when  the  phenomena  have  presented  themselves 
in  rapid   succession   in   an  individual,  that  discoveries  of 


SCIENCE  OF  CHARACTER  AND  FORM     63 

correlation  in  mental  phenomena  have  been  noticed.  The 
correlated  mental  phenomena  may  be  very  different  in 
kind,  and  it  is  only  when  we  know  what  we  are  after  and 
deliberately  seek  for  them  that  we  shall  be  able  to  transcend 
the  special  difficulties  of  the  kind  of  material  we  are  investi- 
gating, and  so  secure  for  psychology  what  is  comparatively 
simple  in  anatomy. 


CHAPTER  VI 

EMANCIPATED  WOMEN 

As  an  immediate  application  of  the  attempt  to  establish  the 
principle  of  intermediate  sexual  forms  by  means  of  a 
differential  psychology,  we  must  now  come  to  the  question 
which  it  is  the  special  object  of  this  book  to  answer, 
theoretically  and  practically,  I  mean  the  woman  question, 
theoretically  so  far  as  it  is  not  a  matter  of  ethnology  and 
national  economics,  and  practically  in  so  far  as  it  is  not 
merely  a  matter  of  law  and  domestic  economy,  that  is  to 
say,  of  social  science  in  the  widest  sense.  The  answer 
which  this  chapter  is  about  to  give  must  not  be  considered 
as  final  or  as  exhaustive.  It  is  rather  a  necessary  pre- 
liminary investigation,  and  does  not  go  beyond  deductions 
from  the  principles  that  I  have  established.  It  will  deal 
with  the  exploration  of  individual  cases  and  will  not 
attempt  to  found  on  these  any  laws  of  general  significance. 
The  practical  indications  that  it  will  give  are  not  moral 
maxims  that  could  or  would  guide  the  future  ;  they  are  no 
more  than  technical  rules  abstracted  from  past  cases.  The 
idea  of  male  and  female  types  will  not  be  discussed  here ; 
that  is  reserved  for  the  second  part  of  my  book.  This 
preliminary  investigation  will  deal  with  only  those  charac- 
tero-logical  conclusions  from  the  principle  of  sexually 
intermediate  forms  that  are  of  significance  in  the  woman 
question. 

The  geneial  direction  of  the  investigation  is  easy  to 
understand  from  what  has  already  been  stated.  A  woman's 
demand  for  emancipation  and  her  qualification  for  it  are  in 
direct  proportion  to  the  amount  of  maleness  in  her.    The 


EMANCIPATED  WOMEN  65 

idea  of  emancipation,  however,  is  many-sided,  and  its 
indefiniteness  is  increased  by  its  association  with  many 
practical  customs  which  have  nothing  to  do  with  the  theory 
of  emancipation.  By  the  term  emancipation  of  a  woman, 
I  imply  neither  her  mastery  at  home  nor  her  subjection  of 
her  husband,  I  have  not  in  mind  the  courage  which 
enables  her  to  go  freely  by  night  or  by  day  unaccompanied 
in  public  places,  or  the  disregard  of  social  rules  which 
prohibit  bachelor  women  from  receiving  visits  from  men, 
or  discussing  or  listening  to  discussions  of  sexual  matters. 
I  exclude  from  my  view  the  desire  for  economic  indepen- 
dence, the  becoming  fit  for  positions  in  technical  schools, 
universities  and  conservatoires  or  teachers'  institutes.  And 
there  may  be  many  other  similar  movements  associated 
with  the  word  emancipation  which  I  do  not  intend  to  deal 
with.  /Emancipation,  as  I  mean  to  discuss  it,  is  not  the 
wish  for  an  outward  equality  with  man,  but  what  is  of  real 
importance  in  the  woman  question,  the  deep-seated  craving 
to  acquire  man's  character,  to  attain  his  mental  and  moral 
freedom,  to  reach  his  real  interests  and  his  creative  power/ 
I  maintain  that  the  real  female  element  has  neither  the 
desire  nor  the  capacity  for  emancipation  in  this  sense.  All 
those  who  are  striving  for  this  real  emancipation,  all  women 
who  are  truly  famous  and  are  of  conspicuous  mental  ability, 
to  the  first  glance  of  an  expert  reveal  some  of  the  ana- 
tomical characters  of  the  male,  some  external  bodily  resem- 
blance to  a  man.  Those  so-called  "women"  who  have 
been  held  up  to  admiration  in  the  past  and  present,  by  the 
advocates  of  woman's  rights,  as  examples  of  what  women 
can  do,  have  almost  invariably  been  what  I  have  described 
as  sexually  intermediate  forms.  The  very  first  of  the  his- 
torical examples,  Sappho  herself,  has  been  handed  down  to 
us  as  an  example  of  the  sexual  invert,  and  from  her  name 
has  been  derived  the  accepted  terms  for  perverted  sexual 
relations  between  women.  The  contents  of  the  second  and 
third  chapter  thus  at  once  become  important  with  regard  to 
the  woman  question.  The  characterological  materia)  at 
our  disposal   with   regard  to  celebrated   and  emancipated 


66  SEX  AND  CHARACTER 

women  is  too  vague  to  serve  as  the  foundation  of  any  satis^ 
factory  theory.  What  is  wanted  is  some  principle  which 
would  enable  us  to  determine  at  what  point  between  male 
and  female  such  individuals  were  placed.  My  law  of  sexual 
affinity  is  such  a  principle.  Its  application  to  the  facts  of 
homo-sexuality  showed  that  the  woman  who  attracts  and  is 
attracted  by  other  women  is  herself  half  male.  Interpreting 
the  historical  evidence  at  our  disposal  in  the  light  of  this 
principle,  we  find  that  the  degree  of  emancipation  and  the 
proportion  of  maleness  in  the  composition  of  a  woman  are 
practically  identical.  Sappho  was  only  the  forerunner  of  a 
long  line  of  famous  women  who  were  either  homo-sexually 
or  bisexually  inclined.  Classical  scholars  have  defended 
Sappho  warmly  against  the  implication  that  there  was 
anything  more  than  mere  friendship  in  her  relations  with 
her  own  sex,  as  if  the  accusation  were  necessarily  degrading. 
In  the  second  part  of  my  book,  however,  I  shall  show 
reasons  in  favour  of  the  possibility  that  homo-sexuality  is  a 
higher  form  than  hetero-sexuality.  For  the  present,  it  is 
enough  to  say  that  homo-sexuality  in  a  woman  is  the  out- 
come of  her  masculinity  and  presupposes  a  higher  degree  of 
development.  Catherine  II.  of  Russia,  and  Queen  Christina 
of  Sweden,  the  highly  gifted  although  deaf,  dumb  and  blind, 
Laura  Bridgman,  George  Sand,  and  a  very  large  number  of 
highly  gifted  women  and  girls  concerning  whom  1  myself 
have  been  able  to  collect  information,  were  partly  bisexual, 
partly  homo-sexual. 

I  shall  now  turn  to  other  indications  in  the  case  of  the 
large  number  of  emancipated  women  regarding  whom  there 
is  no  evidence  as  to  homo-sexuality,  and  I  shall  show  that 
my  attribution  of  maleness  is  no  caprice,  no  egotistical  wish 
of  a  man  to  associate  all  the  higher  manifestations  of  intelli- 
gence with  the  male  sex.  Just  as  homo-sexual  or  bisexual 
women  reveal  their  maleness  by  their  preference  either  for 
women  or  for  womanish  men,  so  hetero-sexual  women  dis- 
play maleness  in  their  choice  of  a  male  partner  who  is  not 
preponderatingly  male.  The  most  famous  of  George  Sand's 
many  affairs  were  those  with  de  Musset,  the  most  effeminat« 


EMANCIPATED  WOMEN  e-j 

and  sentimental  poet,  and  with  Chopin,  who  might  be 
described  almost  as  the  only  female  musician,  so  effeminate 
are  his  compositions.*  Vittoria  Colonna  is  less  known 
because  of  her  own  poetic  compositions  than  because  of 
the  infatuation  for  her  shown  by  Michael  Angelo,  whose 
earlier  friendships  had  been  with  youths.  The  authoress, 
Daniel  Stern,  was  the  mistress  of  Franz  Liszt,  whose  life 
and  compositions  were  extremely  effeminate,  and  who  had 
a  dubious  friendship  with  Wagner,  the  interpretation  of 
which  was  made  plain  by  his  later  devotion  to  King 
Ludwig  IL  of  Bavaria.  Madame  de  Staal,  whose  work  on 
Germany  is  probably  the  greatest  book  ever  produced  by  a 
woman,  is  supposed  to  have  been  intimate  with  August 
Wilhelm  Schlegel,  who  was  a  homo-sexualist,  and  who  had 
been  tutor  to  her  children.  At  certain  periods  of  his  life, 
the  face  of  the  husband  of  Clara  Schumann  might  have 
been  taken  as  that  of  a  woman,  and  a  good  deal  of  his 
music,  although  certainly  not  all,  was  effeminate. 

When  there  is  no  evidence  as  to  the  sexual  relations  of 
famous  women,  we  can  still  obtain  important  conclusions 
from  the  details  of  their  personal  appearance.  Such  data 
support  my  general  proposition. 

George  Eliot  had  a  broad,  massive  forehead  ;  her  move- 
ments, like  her  expression,  were  quick  and  decided,  and 
lacked  all  womanly  grace.  The  face  of  Lavinia  Fontana 
was  intellectual  and  decided,  very  rarely  charming  ;  whilst 
that  of  Rachel  Ruysch  was  almost  wholly  masculine.  The 
biography  of  that  original  poetess,  Annette  von  Droste- 
Hülshoff,  speaks  of  her  wiry,  unwomanly  frame,  and  of  her 
face  as  being  masculine,  and  recalling  that  of  Dante.  The 
authoress  and  mathematician,  Sonia  Kowalevska,  like 
Sappho,  had  an  abnormally  scanty  growth  of  hair,  still  less 
than    is  the    fashion  amongst   the   poetesses  and   female 

*  Chopin's   portraits    shovp   his    effeminacy    plainly.  erimee 

describes  George  Sand  as  being  as  thin  as  a  nail.  At  the  first 
meeting  of  the  two,  the  lady  behaved  like  a  man,  and  the  man  like 
a  girl.  He  blushed  when  she  looked  at  him  and  began  to  pay  him 
compliments  in  her  bass  voice. 


68  SEX  AND  CHARACTER 

students  of  the  present  day.  It  would  be  a  serious  omission 
to  forget  Rosa  Bonheur,  the  very  distinguished  painter ; 
and  it  would  be  difficult  to  point  to  a  single  female  trait 
in  her  appearance  or  character.  The  notorious  Madame 
Blavatsky  is  extremely  masculine  in  her  appearance. 

I  might  refer  to  many  other  emancipated  women  at 
present  well  known  to  the  public,  consideration  of  whom 
has  provided  me  with  much  material  for  the  support  of 
my  proposition  that  the  true  female  element,  the  abstract 
"woman,"  has  nothing  to  do  with  emancipation.  There  is 
some  historical  justification  for  the  saying  "the  longer  the 
hair  the  smaller  the  brain,"  but  the  reservations  made  in 
chap.  ii.  must  be  taken  into  account. 

(jt  is  only  the  male  element  in  emancipated  women  that 
craves  for  emancipation^ 

There  is,  then,  a  stronger  reason  than  has  generally  been 
supposed  for  the  familiar  assumption  of  male  pseudonyms 
by  women  writers.  Their  choice  is  a  mode  of  giving  ex- 
pression to  the  inherent  maleness  they  feel ;  and  this  is 
still  more  marked  in  the  case  of  those  who,  like  George 
Sand,  have  a  preference  for  male  attire  and  masculine  pur- 
suits. The  motive  for  choosing  a  man's  name  springs  from 
the  feeling  that  it  corresponds  with  their  own  character 
much  more  than  from  any  desire  for  increased  notice  from 
the  public.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  up  to  the  present,  partly 
owing  to  interest  in  the  sex  question,  women's  writings  have 
aroused  more  interest,  ceteris  paribus,  than  those  of  men ; 
and,  owing  to  the  issues  involved,  have  always  received  a 
fuller  consideration  and,  if  there  were  any  justification,  a 
greater  meed  of  praise  than  has  been  accorded  to  a  man's 
work  of  equal  merit.  At  the  present  time  especially  many 
women  have  attained  celebrity  by  work  which,  if  it  had 
been  produced  by  a  man,  would  have  passed  almost  un- 
noticed.    Let  us  pause  and  examine  this  more  closely. 

If  we  attempt  to  apply  a  standard  taken  from  the  names  of 
men  who  are  of  acknowledged  value  in  philosophy,  science, 
literature  and  art,  to  the  long  list  of  women  who  have 
achieved  some  kind  of  fame,  there  will  at  once  be  a  miserable 


EMANCIPATED  WOMEN  69 

collapse.     Judged  in  this  way,  it  is  difficult  to  grant  any 
real  degree  of  merit  to  women  like  Angelica  Kaufmann  or 
Madame   Lebrun,   Fernan    Caballero    or    Hroswitha    von 
Gapküersheim,  Mary  Somerville  or  George  Egerton,  Eliza- 
beth  Barrett    Browning  or  Sophie  Germain,  Anna  Maria 
Schurmann  or  Sybilla  Merian.     I  will  not  speak  of  names 
(such  as  that  of  Droste-Hülshoff)  formerly  so  over-rated  in 
the  annals  of  feminism,  nor  will  I  refer  to  the  measure  of 
fame  claimed  for  or  by  living  women.     It   is   enough  to 
make  the  general  statement  that  there  is  not  a  single  woman 
in  the  history  of  thought,  not  even  the  most  manlike,  who 
can  be  truthfully  compared  with  men  of  fifth  or  sixth-rate 
genius,  for  instance  with  Riickert  as  a  poet.  Van  Dyck  as  a 
painter,  or  Scheirmacher  as  a  philosopher.     If  we  eliminate 
hysterical  visionaries,*  such  as  the  Sybils,  the  Priestesses 
of   Delphi,   Bourignon,    Kettenberg,    Jeanna  de  la  Mothe 
Guyon,  Joanna  Southcote,  Beate  Sturmin,  St.  Teresa,  there 
still  remain  cases  like  that  of  Marie  Bashkirtseff.     So  far  as 
I  can  remember  from  her  portrait,  she  at  least  seemed  to  be 
qui^e  womanly  in  face  and  figure,  although  her  forehead 
was  rather  masculine.      But  to  any  one  who   studies  her 
pictures   in    the    Salle    des    Etrangers    in   the    Luxemburg 
Gallery   in    Paris,  and  compares  them  with  those  of   her 
adored  master,  Bastien  Lepage,  it  is  plain  that  she  simply 
had  assimilated  the  style  of  the  latter,  as  in  Goethe's  "  Elec- 
tive Affinities  "  Ottilie  acquired  the  handwriting  of  Eduard. 
There  remain  the  interesting  and  not  infrequent   cases 
where  the  talent  of  a  clever  family  seems  to  reach  its  maxi- 
mum in  a  female  member  of  the  family.     But   it  is  only 
talent  that  is  transmitted  in  this  way,  not   genius.     Mar- 
garethe  van  Eyck  and  Sabina  von  Steinbach  form  the  best 
illustrations  of  the  kind  of  artists  who,  according  to  Ernst 
Guhl,  in  author  with  a  great  admiration  for  women- workers, 
"  have   been  undoubtedly  influenced  in  their  choice  of   an 

*  Hysteria  is  the  principal  cause  of  much  of  the  intellectual 
activity  of  many  of  the  women  above  mentioned.  But  the  usual 
view,  that  these  cases  are  pathological,  is  too  limited  an  interpreta- 
tion, us  I  shall  show  in  the  second  part  of  this  work. 


70  SEX  AND  CHARACTER 

artistic  calling  by  their  fathers,  mothers,  or  brothers.  In 
other  words,  they  found  their  incentive  in  their  own  families. 
There  are  two  or  three  hundred  of  such  cases  on  record, 
and  probably  many  hundreds  more  could  be  added  without 
exhausting  the  numbers  of  similar  instances."  In  order  to 
give  due  weight  to  these  statistics  it  may  be  mentioned  that 
Guhl  had  just  been  speaking  of  "  roughly,  a  thousand  names 
of  women  artists  known  to  us." 

This  concludes  my  historical  review  of  the  emancipated 
women.  It  has  justified  the  assertion  that  real  desire  for 
emancipation  and  real  fitness  for  it  are  the  outcome  of  a 
woman's  maleness. 

"NThe  vast  majority  of  women  have  never  paid  special 
attention  to  art  or  to  science,  and  regard  such  occupations 
merely  as  higher  branches  of  manual  labour,  or  if  they  pro- 
fess a  certain  devotion  to  such  subjects,  it  is  chiefly  as  a 
mode  of  attracting  a  particular  person  or  group  of  persons 
of  the  opposite  sex.)  Apart  from  these,  a  close  investigation 
shows  that  women  really  interested  in  intellectual  matters 
are  sexually  intermediate  forms. 

If  it  be  the  case  that  the  desire  for  freedom  and  equality 
with  man  occurs  only  in  masculine  women,  the  inductive 
conclusion  follows  that  the  female  principle  is  not  conscious 
of  a  necessity  for  emancipation  ;  and  the  argument  becomes 
stronger  if  we  remember  that  it  is  based  on  an  examination 
of  the  accounts  of  individual  cases  and  not  on  psychical 
investigation  of  an  "  abstract  woman." 

If  we  now  look  at  the  question  of  emancipation  from  the 
point  of  view  of  hygiene  (not  morality)  there  is  no  doubt  as 
to  the  harm  in  it.  The  undesirability  of  emancipation  lies 
in  the  excitement  and  agitation  involved.  It  induces  women 
who  have  no  real  original  capacity  but  undoubted  imitative 
powers  to  attempt  to  study  or  write,  from  various  motives, 
such  as  vanity  or  the  desire  to  attract  admirers.  Whilst  it 
cannot  be  denied  that  there  are  a  good  many  women  with 
a  real  craving  for  emancipation  and  for  higher  education, 
these  set  the  fashion  and  are  followed  by  a  host  of  others 
who  get  up  a  ridiculous  agitation  to  convince  themselves  of 


EMANCIPATED  WOMEN  71 

the  reality  of  their  views.  And  many  otherwise  estimable 
and  worthy  wives  use  the  cry  to  assert  themselves  against 
their  husbands,  whilst  daughters  take  it  as  a  method  of 
rebelling  against  maternal  authority.  The  practical  outcome 
of  the  whole  matter  would  be  as  follows  ;  it  being  remem- 
bered that  the  issues  are  too  mutable  for  the  establishment 
of  uniform  rules  or  laws.  Let  there  be  the  freest  scope 
given  to,  and  the  fewest  hindrances  put  in  the  way  of  all 
women  with  masculine  dispositions  who  feel  a  psychical 
necessity  to  devote  themselves  to  masculine  occupations  and 
are  physically  fit  to  undertake  them.  But  the  idea  of  mak- 
ing an  emancipation  party,  of  aiming  at  a  social  revolution, 
must  be  abandoned.  Away  with  the  whole  **  woman's 
movement,"  with  its  unnaturalness  and  artificiality  and  its 
fundamental  errors. 

It  is  most  important  to  have  done  with  the  senseless  cry 
for  "  full  equality,"  for  even  the  malest  woman  is  scarcely 
more  than  50  per  cent,  male,  and  it  is  only  to  that  male 
part  of  her  that  she  owes  her  special  capacity  or  whatever 
importance  she  may  eventually  gam.  It  is  absurd  to  make 
comparisons  between  the  few  really  intellectual  women 
and  one's  average  experience  of  men,  and  to  deduce,  as 
has  been  done,  even  the  superiority  of  the  female  sex. 
As  Darwin  pointed  out,  the  proper  comparison  is  between 
the  most  highly  developed  individuals  of  two  stocks. 
"  If  two  lists,"  Darwin  wrote  in  the  "  Descent  of  Man," 
"  were  made  of  the  most  eminent  men  and  women  in 
poetry,  painting,  sculpture,  music — comprising  composition 
and  performance,  history,  science,  and  philosophy,  with 
half  a  dozen  names  under  each  subject,  the  two  lists 
would  not  bear  comparison."  Moreover,  if  these  lists 
were  carefully  examined  it  would  be  seen  that  the 
women's  list  would  prove  the  soundness  of  my  theory 
of  the  maleness  of  their  genius,  and  the  comparison  would 
be  still  less  pleasing  to  the  champions  of  woman's  rights» 

It  is  frequently  urged  that  it  is  necessary  to  create  a 
public  feeling  in  favour  of  the  full  and  unchecked  mental 
development   of    women.     Such    an    argument    overlooks 


72  SEX  AND  CHARACTER 

the  fact  that  "  emancipation,"  the  "  woman  question," 
"  women's  rights  movements,"  are  no  new  things  in  history, 
but  have  always  been  with  us,  although  with  varying 
prominence  at  different  times  in  history.  It  also  largely 
exaggerates  the  difficulties  men  place  in  the  way  of  the 
mental  development  of  women,  especially  at  the  present 
time.*  Furthermore  it  neglects  the  fact  that  at  the  present 
time  it  is  not  the  true  woman  who  clamours  for  eman- 
cipation, but  only  the  masculine  type  of  woman,  who 
misconstrues  her  own  character  and  the  motives  that 
actuate  her  when  she  formulates  her  demands  in  the  name 
of  woman. 

<s^s  has  been  the  case  with  every  other  movement  in 
history,  so  also  it  has  been  with  the  contemporary  woman's 
movement.  Its  origmators  were  convmced  that  it  was  being 
put  forward  for  the  first  time,  and  that  such  a  thing  had 
never  been  thought  of  before.  They  maintained  that  women 
had  hitherto  been  held  in  bondage  and  enveloped  in  dark- 
ness by  man,  and  that  it  was  high  time  for  her  to  assert  her- 
self and  claim  her  natural  rights./ 

But  the  prototype  of  this  movement,  as  of  other  move- 
ments, occurred  in  the  earliest  times.  Ancient  history  and 
mediaeval  times  alike  give  us  instances  of  women  who,  in 
social  relations  and  intellectual  matters,  fought  for  such 
emancipation,  and  of  male  and  female  apologists  of  the 
female  sex.  It  is  totally  erroneous  to  suggest  that  hitherto 
women  have  had  no  opportunity  for  the  undisturbed 
development  of  their  mental  powers. 

Jacob  Burckhardt,  speaking  of  the  Renaissance,  says : 
"  The  greatest  possible  praise  which  could  be  given  to  the 
Italian  women-celebrities  of  the  time  was  to  say  that  they 
were  like  men  in  brains  and  disposition  ! "  The  virile 
deeds  of  women  recorded  in  the  epics,  especially  those  of 
Boiardo  and  Ariosto,  show  the  ideal  of  the  time.     To  call 

*  There  have  been  many  celebrities  amongst  men  who  received 
practically  no  education — for  instance,  Robert  Burns  and  Wolfram 
von  Eschenbach  ;  but  there  are  no  similar  cases  amongst  women  to 
compare  with  them- 


EMANCIPATED  WOMEN  73 

>a  woman  a  "virago  "  nowadays  would  be  a  doubtful  com- 
ipliment,  but  it  originally  meant  an  honour. 

Women  were  first  allowed  on  the  stage  in  the  sixteenth 
century,  and  actresses  date  from  that  time.  "  At  that 
period  it  was  admitted  that  women  were  just  as  capable  as 
men  of  embodying  the  highest  possible  artistic  ideals." 
It  was  the  period  when  panegyrics  on  the  female  sex  were 
rife ;  Sir  Thomas  More  claimed  for  it  full  equality  with  the 
male  sex,  and  Agrippa  von  Nettesheim  goes  so  far  as  to 
represent  women  as  superior  to  men  !  And  yet  this  was 
all  lost  for  the  fair  sex,  and  the  whole  question  sank  into 
the  oblivion  from  which  the  nineteenth  century  recalled  it. 

Is  it  not  very  remarkable  that  the  agitation  for  the  eman- 
cipation of  women  seems  to  repeat  itself  at  certain  intervals 
in  the  world's  history,  and  lasts  for  a  definite  period  ? 

yt  has  been  noticed  that  in  the  tenth,  fifteenth,  and  six- 
teenth, and  now  again  in  the  nineteenth  and  twentieth 
centuries,  the  agitation  for  the  emancipation  of  women  has 
been  more  marked,  and  the  woman's  movement  more 
vigorous  than  in  the  intervening  periods.  It  would  be 
premature  to  found  a  hypothesis  on  the  data  at  our  dis- 
posal, but  the  possibility  of  a  vastly  important  periodicity 
must  be  borne  in  mind,  of  regularly  recurring  periods  in 
which  it  may  be  that  there  is  an  excess  of  production  of 
hermaphrodite  and  sexually  intermediate  forms.  Such  a 
state  of  affairs  is  not  unknown  in  the  animal  kingdom. 

According  to  my  interpretation,  such  a  period  would  be 
one  of  minimum  "  gonochorism,"  cleavage  of  the  sexes ; 
and  it  would  be  marked,  on  the  one  hand,  by  an  increased 
production  of  male  women,  and  on  the  other,  by  a  similar 
increase  in  female  men.  There  is  strong  evidence  in  favour 
of  such  a  periodicity  ;  if  it  occurs  it  may  be  associated  with 
the  "secessionist  taste,"  which  idealised  tall,  lanky  women 
with  fiat  chests  and  narrow  hips.^  The  enormous  recent 
increase  in  a  kind  of  dandified  homo-sexuality  may  be  due 
to  the  increasing  effeminacy  of  the  age,  and  the  peculiarities 
of  the  Pre-Raphaelite  movement  may  have  a  similar 
explanation. 


74  SEX  AND  CHARACTER 

The  existence  of  such  periods  in  organic  Hfe,  comparable 
with  stages  in  individual  life,  but  extending  over  several 
generations,  would,  if  proved,  throw  much  light  on  many 
obscure  points  in  human  history,  concerning  which  the 
so-called  "  historical  solutions,"  and  especially  the  economic- 
materialistic  views  now  in  vogue  have  proved  so  futile.  The 
history  of  the  world  from  the  biological  standpoint  has  still 
to  be  written  ;  it  lies  in  the  future.  Here  1  can  do  little  more 
than  indicate  the  direction  which  future  work  should  take. 

Were  it  proved  that  at  certain  periods  fewer  herma- 
phrodite beings  were  produced,  and  at  certain  other  periods 
more,  it  would  appear  that  the  rising  and  falling,  the  periodic 
occurrence  and  disappearance  of  the  woman  movement  in 
an  unfailing  rhythm  of  ebb  and  flow,  was  one  of  the  ex- 
pressions of  the  preponderance  of  masculine  and  feminine 
women  with  the  concomitant  greater  or  lesser  desire  for 
emancipation. 

Obviously  I  do  not  take  into  account  in  relation  to  the 
woman  question  the  large  number  of  womanly  women,  the 
wives  of  the  prolific  artisan  class  whom  economic  pressure 
forces  to  factory  or  field  labour.  The  connection  between 
industrial  progress  and  the  woman  question  is  much  less 
close  than  is  usually  realised,  especially  by  the  Social 
Democratic  Group.  The  relation  between  the  mental 
energy  required  for  intellectual  and  for  industrial  pursuits 
is  even  less.  .^France,  for  instance,  although  it  can  boast 
three  of  the  most  famous  women,  has  never  had  a  successful 
woman's  movement,  and  yet  in  no  other  European  country 
are  there  so  many  really  businesslike,  capable  womei'^^ 
The  struggle  for  the  material  necessities  of  life  has  nothing 
to  do  with  the  struggle  for  intellectual  development,  and  a 
sharp  distinction  mast  be  made  between  the  two. 

The  pro-pects  of  the  movement  for  intellectual  advance 
on  the  part  of  women  are  not  very  promising  ;  but  still  less 
promising  is  another  view,  sometimes  discussed  in  the 
same  connection,  the  view  that^he  human  race  is  moving 
towards  a  complete  sexual  differentiation,  a  definite  sexual 
dimorphism.N 


EMANCIPATED  WOMEN  75 

The  latter  view  seems  to  me  fundamentally  untenable, 
because  in  the  higher  groups  of  the  animal  kingdom  there 
is  no  evidence  for  the  increase  of  sexual  dimorphism. 
Worms  and  rotifers,  many  birds  and  the  mandrills  amongst 
the  apes,  have  more  advanced  sexual  dimorphism  than  man. 
On  the  view  that  such  an  increased  sexual  dimorphism 
were  to  be  expected,  the  necessity  for  emancipation  would 
gradually  disappear  as  mankind  became  separated  into  the 
completely  male  and  the  completely  female.  On  the  other 
hand,  the  view  that  there  will  be  periodical  resurrections 
of  the  woman's  movement  would  reduce  the  whole  affair  to 
ridiculous  impotence,  making  it  only  an  ephemeral  phase  in 
the  history  of  mankind. 

A  complete  obliteration  will  be  the  fate  of  any  emancipa- 
tion movement  which  attempts  to  place  the  whole  sex  in  a 
new  relation  to  society,  and  to  see  in  man  its  perpetual 
oppressor.  A  corps  of  Amazons  might  be  formed,  but  as 
time  went  on  the  material  for  the  corps  would  cease  to 
occur.  The  history  of  the  woman  movement  during  the 
Renaissance  and  its  complete  disappearance  contains  a 
lesson  for  the  advocates  of  women's  rights.  Real  intellectual 
freedom  cannot  be  attained  by  an  agitated  mass  ;  it  must  be 
fought  for  by  the  individual.  Who  is  the  enemy  ?  What 
are  the  retarding  influences  ? 

The  greatest,  the  one  enemy  of  the  emancipation  of 
women  is  woman  herself.  It  is  left  to  the  second  part  of 
my  work  to  prove  this. 


SECOND  OR  PRINCIPAL  PART 
THE  SEXUAL  TYPES 


CHAPTER   I 

MAN    AND    WOMAN 

"  All  that  a  man  does  is  physiognomical  of  him." 

Carlyle, 

A  FREE  field  for  the  investigation  of  the  actual  contrasts 
between  the  sexes  is  gained  when  we  recognise  that  male 
and  female,  man  and  woman,  must  be  considered  only  as 
types,  and  that  the  existing  individuals,  upon  whose  quali- 
ties there  has  been  so  much  controversy,  are  mixtures  of  the 
types  in  different  proportions.  {Sexually  intermediate  forms, 
which  are  the  only  actually  existing  individualsy^were  dealt 
with  in  a  more  or  less  schematic  fashion  in  the  first  part  of 
this  book.  Consideration  of  the  general  biological  applica- 
tion of  my  theory  was  entered  upon  there  ;  but  now  I  have 
to  make  mankind  the  special  subject  of  my  investigation, 
and  to  show  the  defects  of  the  results  gained  by  the  method 
of  introspective  analysis,  as  these  results  must  be  qualified 
by  the  universal  existence  of  sexually  intermediate  condi- 
tions. In  plants  and  animals  the  presence  of  hermaphro- 
ditism is  an  undisputed  fact  ;  but  in  them  it  appears  more 
to  be  the  juxtaposition  of  the  male  and  female  genital 
glands  in  the  same  individual  than  an  actual  fusion  of  the 
two  sexes,  more  the  co-existence  of  the  two  extremes  than 
a  quite  neutral  condition.  In  the  case  of  human  beings, 
however,  it  appears  to  be  psychologically  true  that  an  indi- 
vidual, at  least  at  one  and  the  same  moment,  is  always 
either  man  or  woman.  This  is  in  harmony  with  the  fact 
that  each  individual,  whether  superficially  regarded  as  male 
or  female,  at  once  can  recognise  his  sexual  complement  in. 


8o  SEX  AND  CHARACTER 

another  individual  "woman"  or  "  man."*  This  uni-sexuaHty 
is  demonstrated  by  the  fact,  the  theoretical  value  of  which 
can  hardly  be  over-estimated,  that,  in  the  relations  of  two 
homo-sexual  men  one  always  plays  the  physical  and  psy- 
chical roll  of  the  man,  and  in  cases  of  prolonged  inter- 
course retains  his  male  first-name,  or  takes  one,  whilst  the 
other,  who  plays  the  part  of  the  woman,  either  assumes  a 
woman's  name  or  calls  himself  by  it,  or — and  this  is  suffi- 
ciently characteristic — receives  it  from  the  former. 

In  the  same  way,  in  the  sexual  relations  of  two  women, 
one  always  plays  the  male  and  the  other  the  female  part,  a 
fact  of  deepest  significance.  Here  we  encounter,  in  a 
most  unexpected  fashion,  the  fundamental  relationship 
between  the  male  and  female  elements.  In  spite  of  all 
sexually  intermediate  conditions,  human  beings  are  always 
one  of  two  things,  either  male  or  female.  There  is  a  deep 
truth  underlying  the  old  empirical  sexual  duality,  and  this 
must  not  be  neglected,  even  although  in  concrete  cases 
there  is  not  a  necessary  harmony  in  the  anatomical  and 
morphological  conditions.  To  realise  this  is  to  make  a 
great  step  forward  and  to  advance  towards  most  important 
results.  In  this  way  we  reach  a  conception  of  a  real 
"  being."  The  task  of  the  rest  of  this  book  is  to  set  forth 
the  significance  of  this  "  existence."  As,  however,  this 
existence  is  bound  up  with  the  most  difficult  side  of 
characterology,  it  will  be  well,  before  setting  out  on  our 
adventurous  task,  to  attempt  some  preliminary  orientation. 

The  obstacles  in  the  way  of  characterological  investiga- 
tion are  very  great,  if  only  on  account  of  the  complexity  of 
the  material.  Often  and  often  it  happens  that  when  the 
path  through  the  jungle  appears  to  have  been  cleared,  it  is 
lost  again  in  impenetrable  thickets,  and  it  seems  impossible 

*  I  once  heard  a  bi-sexual  man  exclaim,  when  he  saw  a  bi-sexual 
actress  with  a  slight  tendency  to  a  beard,  a  deep  sonorous  voice, 
and  very  little  hair  on  her  head,  "  There  is  a  fine  woman." 
"  Woman  "  means  something  different  for  every  man  or  for  every 
poet,  and  yet  it  is  always  the  same,  the  sexual  complement  of  their 
own  constitution. 


MAN  AND  WOMAN  8i 

to  recover  it.  But  the  greatest  difficulty  is  that  when  the 
systematic  method  of  setting  out  the  complex  material  has 
been  proceeded  with  and  seems  about  to  lead  to  good 
results,  then  at  once  objections  of  the  most  serious  kind 
arise  and  almost  forbid  the  attempt  to  make  types.  With 
regard  to  the  differences  between  the  sexes,  for  instance, 
the  most  useful  theory  that  has  been  put  forward  is  the 
existence  of  a  kind  of  polarity,  two  extremes  separated  by 
a  multitude  of  intermediate  conditions.  The  characterolo- 
gical  differences  appear  to  follow  this  rule  in  a  fashion  not 
dissimilar  to  the  suggestion  of  the  Pythagorean,  Alcmaeon 
of  Kroton,  and  recalling  the  recent  chemical  resurrection 
of  Schelling's  "  Natur-philosophie." 

But  even  if  we  are  able  to  determine  the  exact  point 
occupied  by  an  individual  on  the  line  between  two  ex- 
tremes, and  multiply  this  determination  by  discovering  it 
for  a  great  many  characters,  would  this  complex  system  of 
co-ordmate  lines  really  give  us  a  conception  of  the  indivi- 
dual ?  Would  it  not  be  a  relapse  to  the  dogmatic  scepticism 
of  Mach  and  Hume,  were  we  to  expect  that  an  analysis 
could  be  a  full  description  of  the  human  individual  ? 
And  in  a  fashion  it  would  be  a  sort  of  Weismannistic  doc- 
trine of  particulate  determinants,  a  mosaic  psychology. 

/rhis  brings  us  in  a  new  way  directly  against  the  old,  over- 
ripe problem.  Is  there  in  a  man  a  single  and  simple  exist- 
ence, and,  if  so,  in  what  relation  does  that  stand  to  the  ^' 
complex  psychical  phenomena  ?  Has  man,  indeed,  a  soul  ? 
It  is  easy  to  understand  why  there  has  never  been  a  science 
of  character.  The  object  of  such  a  science,  the  character 
itself,  is  problematical.  The  problem  of  all  metaphysics 
and  theories  of  knowledge,  the  fundamental  problem  of 
psychology,  is  also  the  problem  of  characterology.  At  the 
least,  characterology  will  have  to  take  into  account  the 
the'^ry  of  knowledge  itself  with  regard  to  its  postulates, 
claims,  and  objects,  and  will  have  to  attempt  to  obtain  infor- 
mation as  to  all  the  differences  in  the  nature  of  men./ 

This  unlimited  science  of  character  will  be  something 
more  than  the  "  psychology  of  individual  differences,"  the 

F 


82  SEX  AND  CHARACTER 

renewed  insistence  upon  which  as  a  goal  of  science  we  owe 
to  L.  William  Stern  ;  it  will  be  more  than  a  sort  of  polity  of 
the  motor  and  sensory  reactions  of  the  individual,  and  in  so 
far  will  not  sink  so  low  as  the  usual  "  results  "  of  the  modern 
experimental  psychologists,  which,  indeed,  are  little  more 
than  statistics  of  physical  experiments.  It  will  hope  to 
retain  some  kind  of  contact  with  the  actuahties  of  the  soul 
which  the  modern  school  of  psychology  seems  to  have 
forgotten,  and  will  not  have  to  fear  that  it  will  have  to  offer 
to  ardent  students  of  psychology  no  more  than  profound 
studies  of  words  of  one  syllable,  or  of  the  results  on  the 
mind  of  small  doses  of  caffein.  It  is  a  lamentable  testimony 
to  the  insufficiency  of  modern  psychology  that  distinguished 
men  of  science,  who  have  not  been  content  with  the  study 
of  perception  and  association,  have  yet  had  to  hand  over  to 
poetry  the  explanation  of  such  fundamental  facts  as  heroism 
and  self-sacrifice. 
{No  science  will  become  shallow  so  quickly  as  psychology 
if  it  deserts  philosophy.  Its  separation  from  philosophy  is 
the  true  cause  of  its  impotency.  Psychology  will  have  to 
discover  that  the  doctrine  of  sensations  is  practically  useless 
to  it.  The  empirical  psychologists  of  to-day,  in  their  search 
for  the  development  of  character,  begin  with  investigation 
of  touch  and  the  common  sensations.  But  the  analysis  of 
sensations  is  simply  a  part  of  the  physiology  of  sense,  and 
any  attempt  to  bring  it  into  relation  with  the  real  problems 
of  psychology  must  fail!\ 

It  is  a  misfortune  of  the  scientific  psychology  of  the  day 
that  it  has  been  influenced  so  deeply  by  two  physicists, 
Fechner  and  von  Helmholtz,  with  the  result  that  it  has 
failed  to  recognise  that  only  the  external  and  not  the 
internal  world  can  be  reconstructed  from  sensations.  The 
two  most  intelligent  of  the  empirical  psychologists  of  recent 
times,  William  James  and  R.  Avenarius,  have  felt  almost 
instinctively  that  psychology  cannot  really  rest  upon  sensa- 
tions of  the  skin  and  muscles,  although,  indeed,  all  modern 
psychology  does  depend  upon  study  of  sensations.  Dilthey 
did  not  lay  enough  stress  on  his  argument  that  existing 


MAN  AND  WOMAN  83 

psychology  does  nothing  towards  problems  that  are 
eminently  psychological,  such  as  murder,  friendship,  lone- 
liness, and  so  forth.  If  anything  is  to  be  gained  in  the 
future  there  must  be  a  demand  for  a  really  psychological 
psychology,  and  its  first  battle-cry  must  be  :  "  Away  with 
the  study  of  sensations." 

In  attempting  the  broad  and  deep  characterology  that  I 
have  indicated,  I  must  set  out  with  a  conception  of  character 
itself  as  a  unit  existence.  As  in  the  fifth  chapter  of  Part  I., 
I  tried  to  show  that  behind  the  fleeting  physiological  changes 
there  is  a  permanent  morphological  form,  so  in  charac- 
terology we  must  seek  the  permanent,  existing  something 
through  the  fleeting  changes. 

\The  character,  however,  is  not  something  seated  behind 
the  thoughts  and  feelings  of  the  individual,  but  something 
revealing  itself  in  every  thought  and  feeling.  "  All  that  a 
man  does  is  physiognomical  of  him."  Just  as  every  cell 
bears  within  it  the  characters  of  the  whole  individual,  so 
every  psychical  manifestation  of  a  man  involves  not  merely  a 
few  little  characteristic  traits,  but  his  whole  being,  of  which 
at  one  moment  one  quality,  at  another  moment  another 
quality,  comes  into  prominence.^ 

Just  as  no  sensation  is  ever  isolated,  but  is  set  in  a  com- 
plete field  of  sensation,  the  world  of  the  Ego,  of  which  now 
one  part  and  now  the  other,  stands  out  more  plainly,  so  the 
whole  man  is  manifest  in  every  moment  of  the  psychical 
life,  although,  now  one  side,  now  the  other,  is  more  visible. 
This  existence,  manifest  in  every  moment  of  the  psychical 
life,  is  the  object  of  characterology.  By  accepting  this, 
there  will  be  completed  for  the  first  time  a  real  psychology, 
existing  psychology,  in  manifest  contradiction  of  the  mean- 
ing of  the  word,  having  concerned  itself  almost  entirely  with 
the  motley  world,  the  changing  field  of  sensations,  and  over- 
looked the  ruling  force  of  the  Ego.  The  new  psychology 
would  be  a  doctrine  of  the  whole,  and  would  become  fresh 
and  fertile  inasmuch  as  it  would  combine  the  complexity 
of  the  subject  and  of  the  object,  two  spheres  which  can  be 
separated  only  in  abstraction.     Many  disputed  points  of 


84  SEX  AND  CHARACTER 

psychology  (perhaps  the  most  important)  would  be  settled 
by  an  application  of  such  characterology,  as  that  would 
explain  why  so  many  different  views  have  been  held  on  the 
same  subject.  The  same  psychical  process  appears  from 
time  to  time  in  different  aspects,  merely  because  it  takes  tone 
and  colouring  from  the  individual  character.  And  so  it 
well  may  be  that  the  doctrine  of  differential  psychology  may 
receive  its  completion  in  the  domain -of  general  psychology. 
vThe  confusion  of  characterology  with  the  doctrine  of  the 
soul  has  been  a  great  misfortune,  but  because  this  has 
occurred  in  actual  history,  is  no  reason  why  it  should  con- 
tinue. The  absolute  sceptic  differs  only  in  a  word  from  the 
absolute  dogmatist.  The  man  who  dogmatically  accepts 
the  position  of  absolute  phenomenalism,  believing  it  to 
relieve  him  of  all  the  burden  of  proof  that  the  mere  entering 
on  another  standpoint  would  itself  entail,  will  be  ready  to 
dismiss  without  proof  the  existence  which  characterology 
posits,  and  which  has  nothing  to  do  with  a  metaphysical 
"  essence."/ 

Characterology  has  to  defend  itself  against  two  great 
enemies.  The  one  assumes  that  character  is  something 
ultimate,  and  as  little  the  subject-matter  of  science  as  is 
the  art  of  a  painter.  The  other  looks  on  the  sensations 
as  the  only  realities,  on  sensation  as  the  ground-work  of 
the  world  of  the  Ego,  and  denies  the  existence  of  cha- 
racter. What  is  left  for  characterology,  the  science  of 
character  ?  On  the  one  hand,  there  are  those  who  cry, 
"  Deindividuo  nulla  scientia,"  and  "  Individuum  est  ineffa- 
bile " ;  on  the  other  hand,  there  are  those  sworn  to 
science,  who  maintain  that  science  has  nothing  to  do  with 
character. 

In  such  a  cross-fire,  characterology  has  to  take  its  place, 
and  it  may  well  be  feared  that  it  may  share  the  fate  of  its 
sisters  and  remain  a  trivial  subject  like  physiognomy  or  a 
diviner's  art  like  graphology. 


CHAPTER   II 

MALE  AND  FEMALE  SEXUALITY 

"  Woman  does  not  betray  her  secret." 

Kant. 

"  From  a  woman  you  can  learn  nothing  of  women." 

Nietzsche. 


(i 


Py  psychology,  as  a  whole,  we  generally  understand  the 
psychology  of  the  psychologists,  and  these  are  exclusively 
men  !  Never  since  human  history  began  have  we  heard 
of  a  female  psychology  !,)  None  the  less  the  psychology 
of  woman  constitutes  a  chapter  as  important  with  regard  to 
general  psychology  as  that  of  the  child.  And  inasmuch  as 
the  psychology  of  man  has  always  been  written  with  un- 
conscious but  definite  reference  to  man,  general  psychology 
has  become  simply  the  psychology  of  men,  and  the  problem 
of  the  psychology  of  the  sexes  will  be  raised  as  soon  as  the 
existence  of  a  separate  psychology  of  women  has  been 
realised.  Kant  said  that  in  anthropology  the  peculiarities 
of  the  female  were  more  a  study  for  the  philosopher  than 
those  of  the  male,  and  it  may  be  that  the  psychology  of  the 
sexes  will  disappear  in  a  psychology  of  the  female. 

None  the  less  the  psychology  of  women  will  have  to  be 
written  by  men.  It  is  easy  to  suggest  that  such  an  attempt 
is  foredoomed  to  failure,  inasmuch  as  the  conclusions  must 
be  drawn  from  an  alien  sex  and  cannot  be  verified  by  intro- 
spection. Granted  the  possibility  that  woman  could 
describe  herself  with  sufficient  exactness,  it  by  no  means 
follows  that  she  would   be  interested    in  the  sides  of  her 


86  SEX  AND  CHARACTER 

character  that  would  interest  us.  Moreover,  even  if  she 
could  and  would  explore  herself  fully,  it  is  doubtful  if  she 
could  bring  herself  to  talk  about  herself.  I  shall  show  that  | 
these  three  improbabilities  spring  from  the  same  source  j 
in  the  nature  of  woman. 

This  investigation,  therefore,  lays  itself  open  to  the 
charge  that  no  one  who  is  not  female  can  be  in  a  posi- 
tion to  make  accurate  statements  about  women.  In  the 
meantime  the  objection  must  stand,  although,  later,  I  shall 
have  more  to  say  of  it.  I  will  say  only  this  much — up  to 
now,  and  is  this  only  a  consequence  of  man's  suppression  ? — 
we  have  no  account  from  a  pregnant  woman  of  her  sensa- 
tions and  feelings,  neither  in  poetry  nor  in  memoirs,  nor 
even  in  a  gynaecological  treatise.  This  cannot  be  on 
account  of  excessive  modesty,  for,  as  Schopenhauer  rightly 
pointed  out,  there  is  nothing  so  far  removed  from  a  pregnant 
woman  as  shame  as  to  her  condition.  Besides,  there  would 
still  remain  to  them  the  possibility  of,  after  the  birth,  con- 
fessing from  memory  the  psychical  life  during  the  time  ;  if 
a  sense  of  shame  had  prevented  them  from  such  communi- 
cation during  the  time,  it  would  be  gone  afterwards,  and 
the  varied  interests  of  such  a  disclosure  ought  to  have 
induced  some  one  to  break  silence.  But  this  has  not  been 
done.  Just  as  we  have  always  been  indebted  to  men  for 
really  trustworthy  expositions  of  the  psychical  side  of 
women,  so  also  it  is  to  men  that  we  owe  descriptions  of 
the  sensations  of  pregnant  women.  What  is  the  meaning 
of  this  ? 

Although  in  recent  times  we  have  had  revelations  of  the 
psychical  life  of  half-women  and  three-quarter  women,  it  is 
practically  only  about  the  male  side  of  them  that  they  have 
written.  We  have  really  only  one  clue  ;  we  have  to  rely 
upon  the  female  element  in  men.  The  principle  of  sexually 
intermediate  forms  is  the  authority  for  what  we  know  about 
women  through  men.  I  shall  define  and  complete  the 
application  of  this  principle  later  on.  In  its  indefinite  form, 
the  principle  would  seem  to  imply  that  the  most  womanish 
man  would  be  best  able  to  describe  woman,  and  that  the 


MALE  AND  FEMALE  SEXUALITY         87 

description  might  be  completed  by  the  real  woman. 
This,  however,  is  extremely  doubtful.  I  must  point  out 
that  a  man  can  have  a  considerable  proportion  of  female- 
ness  in  him  without  necessarily,  to  the  same  extent,  being 
able  to  portray  intermediate  forms.  It  is  the  more  remark- 
able that  the  male  can  give  a  faithful  account  of  the  nature 
of  the  female  ;  since,  indeed,  it  must  be  admitted  from  the 
extreme  maleness  of  successful  portrayers  of  women  that 
we  cannot  dispute  the  existence  of  this  capacity  in  the 
abstract  male  ;  this  power  of  the  male  over  the  female  is  a 
most  remarkable  problem,  and  we  shall  have  to  consider  it 
later.  For  the  present  we  must  take  it  as  a  fact,  and  pro- 
ceed to  inquire  in  what  lies  the  actual  psychological 
difference  between  male  and  female. 

It  has  been  sought  to  attribute  the  fundamental  difference 
of  the  sexes  to  the  existence  of  a  stronger  sexual  impulse  in 
man,  and  to  derive  everything  else  from  that.  Apart  from  the 
question  as  to  whether  the  phrase  "sexual  instinct"  denotes 
a  simple  and  real  thing,  it  is  to  be  doubted  if  there  is  proof  of 
such  a  difference.  It  is  not  more  probable  than  the  ancient 
theories  as  to  the  influence  of  the  "unsatistied  womb"  in 
the  female,  or  of  the  "  semen  retentum "  in  men,  and  we 
have  to  be  on  guard  against  the  current  tendency  to  refer 
nearly  everything  to  sublimated  sexual  instinct.  No  sys- 
tematic theory  could  be  founded  on  a  generalisation  so 
vague.  It  is  most  improbable  that  the  greater  or  lesser 
strength  of  the  sexual  impulse  determines  other  qualities. 

O^s  a  matter  of  fact,  the  statements  that  men  have  stronger 
sexual  impulses  than  women,  or  that  women  have  them 
stronger  than  men,  are  false.  The  strength  of  the  sexual 
impulse  in  a  man  does  not  depend  upon  the  proportion  of 
masculinity  in  his  composition,  and  in  the  same  way  the 
degree  of  femininity  of  a  woman  does  not  determine  her 
sexual  impulse*'  These  differences  in  mankind  still  await 
classification. 

Contrary  to  the  general  opinion,  there  is  no  difference  in 
the  total  sexual  impulses  of  the  sexes.  However,  if  we 
examine  the  matter  in  respect  to  the  two  component  forces 


88  SEX  AND  CHARACTER 

into  which  Albert  Moll  analysed  the  impulse,  we  shall  find 
that  a  difference  does  exist.  These  forces  may  be  termed 
the  "  liberating "  and  the  "  uniting "  impulses.  The  first 
appears  in  the  form  of  the  discomfort  caused  by  the  accu- 
mulation of  ripe  sexual  cells ;  the  second  is  the  desire  of 
the  ripe  individual  for  sexual  completion.  Both  impulses 
are  possessed  by  the  male ;  in  the  female  only  the  latter  is 
present.  The  anatomy  and  the  physiological  processes  of 
the  sexes  bear  out  the  distinction. 

In  this  connection  it  may  be  noted  that  only  the  most 
male  youths  are  addicted  to  masturbation,  and  although 
it  is  often  disputed,  I  believe  that  similar  vices  occur  only 
among  the  maler  of  women,  and  are  absent  from  the  female 
nature. 

I  must  now  discuss  the  "uniting"  impulse  of  women,  for 
that  plays  the  chief,  if  not  the  sole  part  in  her  sexuality. 
But  it  must  not  be  supposed  that  this  is  greater  in  one  sex 
than  the  other.  Any  such  idea  comes  from  a  confusion 
between  the  desire  for  a  thing  and  the  stimulus  towards  the 
active  part  in  securing  what  is  desired.  Throughout  the 
animal  and  plant  kingdoms,  the  male  reproductive  cells  are 
the  motile,  active  agents,  which  move  through  space  to  seek 
out  the  passive  female  cells,  and  this  physiological  difference 
is  sometimes  confused  with  the  actual  wish  for,  or  stimulus 
to,  sexual  union.  And  to  add  to  the  confusion,  it  happens, 
in  the  animal  kingdom  particularly,  that  the  male,  in  addition 
to  the  directly  sexual  stimulus,  has  the  instinct  to  pursue 
and  bodily  capture  the  female,  whilst  the  latter  has  only  the 
passive  part  to  be  taken  possession  of.  These  differences 
of  habit  must  not  be  mistaken  for  real  differences  of  desire. 

It  can  be  shown,  moreover,  that  woman  is  sexually  much 
more  excitable  (not  more  sensitive)  physiologically  than 
man. 

/The  condition  of  sexual  excitement  is  the  supreme  moment 
of  a  woman's  life.;  The  woman  is  devoted  wholly  to  sexual 
matters,  that  is  to  say,  to  the  spheres  of  begetting  and  of 
reproduction.  Her  relations  to  her  husband  and  children 
complete  her  life,  whereas  the  male  is  something  more  than 


MALE  AND  FEMALE  SEXUALITY         89 

sexual.  In  this  respect,  rather  than  in  the  relative  strength 
of  the  sexual  impulses,  there  is  a  real  difference  between  the 
sexes.y  It  is  important  to  distinguish  between  the  intensity 
with  which  sexual  matters  are  pursued  and  the  proportion 
of  the  total  activities  of  life  that  are  devoted  to  them  and  to 
their  accessory  cares.  The  greater  absorption  of  the  human 
female  by  the  sphere  of  sexual  activities  is  the  most  signifi- 
cant difference  between  the  sexes. 

The  female,  moreover,  is  completely  occupied  and  content 
with  sexual  matters,  whilst  the  male  is  interested  in  much 
else,  in  war  and  sport,  in  social  affairs  and  feasting,  in  philo- 
sophy and  science,  in  business  and  politics,  in  religion  and 
art.  I  do  not  mean  to  imply  that  this  difference  has  always 
existed,  as  I  do  not  think  that  important.  As  in  the  case  of 
the  Jewish  question,  it  may  be  said  that  the  Jews  have  their 
present  character  because  it  has  been  forced  upon  them,  and 
that  at  one  time  they  were  different.  It  is  now  impossible  to 
prove  this,  and  we  may  leave  it  to  those  who  believe  in  the 
modification  by  the  environment  to  accept  it.  The  his- 
torical evidence  is  equivocal  on  the  point.  In  the  question 
of  women,  we  have  to  take  people  as  they  exist  to-day.  If, 
however,  we  happen  to  come  on  attributes  that  could  not 
possibly  have  been  grafted  on  them  from  without,  we  may 
believe  that  such  have  always  been  with  them.  Of  contem- 
porary women  at  least  one  thing  is  certain.  Apart  from 
an  exception  to  be  noted  in  chap.  xii.,(it  is  certain  that 
when  the  female  occupies  herself  with  matters  outside  the 
interests  of  sex,  it  is  for  the  man  that  she  loves  or  by  whom 
she  wishes  to  be  loved^  She  takes  no  real  interest  in  the 
things  for  themselves.  It  may  happen  that  a  real  female 
learns  Latin  ;  if  so,  it  is  for  some  such  purpose  as  to  help  her 
son  who  is  at  school.  Desire  for  a  subject  and  ability  for 
it,  interest  in  it,  and  the  facility  for  acquiring  it,  are  usually 
proportional.  He  who  has  slight  muscles  has  no  desire  to 
wield  an  axe  ;  those  without  the  faculty  for  mathematics  do 
not  desire  to  study  that  subject.  Talent  seems  to  be  rare 
and  feeble  in  the  real  female  (although  possibly  it  is  merely 
that  the  dominant  sexuality  prevents  its  development),  with 


90  SEX  AND  CHARACTER 

the  result  that  woman  has  no  power  of  forming  the  com- 
binations which,  although  they  do  not  actually  make  the 
individuality,  certainly  shape  it. 

Corresponding  to  true  women,  there  are  extremely  female 
men  who  are  to  be  found  always  in  the  apartments  of  the 
women,  and  who  are  interested  in  nothing  but  love  and 
sexual  matters.  Such  men,  however,  are  not  the  Don  Juans. 
(The  female  principle  is,  then,  nothing  more  than  sexuality ; 
the  male  principle  is  sexual  and  something  more.')  This 
difference  is  notable  in  the  different  way  in  which  men  and 
women  enter  the  period  of  puberty.  In  the  case  of  the 
male  the  onset  of  puberty  is  a  crisis;  he  feels  that  something 
new  and  strange  has  come  into  his  being,  that  something 
has  been  added  to  his  powers  and  feelmgs  independently  of 
his  will.  The  physiological  stimulus  to  sexual  activity  appears 
to  come  from  outside  his  being,  to  be  independent  of  his  will, 
and  many  men  remember  the  disturbing  event  throughout 
their  after  lives.  The  woman,  on  the  other  hand,  not  only 
is  not  disturbed  by  the  onset  of  puberty,  but  feels  that  her 
importance  has  been  increased  by  it.  The  male,  as  a  youth, 
has  no  longing  for  the  onset  of  sexual  maturity  ;  the  female, 
from  the  time  when  she  is  still  quite  a  young  girl,  looks 
forward  to  that  time  as  one  from  which  everything  is  to  be 
expected.  Man's  arrival  at  maturity  is  frequently  accom- 
panied by  feelings  of  repulsion  and  disgust ;  the  young 
female  watches  the  development  of  her  body  at  the  approach 
of  puberty  with  excitement  and  impatient  delight.  It  seems 
as  if  the  onset  of  puberty  were  a  side  path  in  the  normal 
development  of  man,  whereas  in  the  case  of  woman  it  is  the 
direct  conclusion.  There  are  few  boys  approaching  puberty 
to  whom  the  idea  that  they  would  marry  (in  the  general 
sense,  not  a  particular  girl)  would  not  appear  ridiculous, 
whilst  the  smallest  girl  is  almost  invariably  excited  and 
interested  in  the  question  of  her  future  marriage.  For  such 
reasons  a  woman  assigns  positive  value  only  to  her  period  of 
maturity  in  her  own  case  and  in  that  of  other  women  ;  in 
childhood,  as  in  old  age,  she  has  no  real  relation  to  the 
world.  \The  thought  of  her  childhood  is  for  her,  later  on, 


MALE  AND  FEMALE  SEXUALITY         91 

only  the  remembrance  of  her  stupidity ;  she  faces  the 
/approach  of  old  age  with  dislike  and  abhorrence^  The  only 
real  memories  of  her  childhood  are  connected  with  sex,  and 
these  fade  away  in  the  intensely  greater  significance  of  her 
maturity.  The  passage  of  a  woman  from  virginity  is  the 
great  dividing  point  of  her  life,  whilst  the  corresponding 
event  in  the  case  of  a  male  has  very  little  relation  to  the 
course  of  his  life./ 

Woman  is  only  sexual,  man  is  partly  sexual,  and  this 
difference  reveals  itself  in  various  ways.  The  parts  of  the 
male  body  by  stimulation  of  which  sexuality  is  excited  are 
limited  in  area,  and  are  strongly  localised,  whilst  in  the  case 
of  the  woman,  they  are  diffused  over  her  whole  body,  so 
that  stimulation  may  take  place  almost  from  any  part. 
When  in  the  second  chapter  of  Part  I.,  I  explained  that 
sexuality  is  distributed  over  the  whole  body  in  both  sexes,  I 
did  not  mean  that,  therefore,  the  sense  organs,  through  which 
the  definite  impulses  are  stimulated,  were  equally  distributed. 
There  are,  certainly,  areas  of  greater  excitability,  even  in  the 
case  of  the  woman,  but  there  is  not,  as  in  the  man,  a  sharp 
division  between  the  sexual  areas  and  the  body  generally. 

'The  morphological  isolation  of  the  sexual  area  from  the 
rest  of  the  body  in  the  case  of  man,  may  be  taken  as  sym- 
bolical of  the  relation  of  sex  to  his  whole  nature./  Just  as 
there  is  a  contrast  between  the  sexual  and  the  sexless  parts 
of  a  man's  body,  so  there  is  a  time-change  in  his  sexuality. 
&he  female  is  always  sexual,  the  male  is  sexual  only  inter- 
mittently. The  sexual  instinct  is  always  active  in  woman 
(as  to  the  apparent  exceptions  to  this  sexuality  of  women,  I 
shall  have  to  speak  later  on),  whilst  in  man  it  is  at  rest  from 
time  to  time.  And  thus  it  happens  that  the  sexual  impulse  of 
the  male  is  eruptive  in  character  and  so  appears  stronger. 
The  real  difference  between  the  sexes  is  that  in  the  male 
the  desire  is  periodical,  in  the  female  continuous/ 

This  exclusive  and  persisting  sexuality  of  the  female  has 
important  physical  and  psychical  consequences.  As  the 
sexuality  of  the  male  is  an  adjunct  to  his  life,  it  is  possible 
for  him  to  keep  it  in  the  physiological  background,  and  out 


92  SEX  AND  CHARACTER 

of  his  consciousness.  And  so  a  man  can  lay  aside  his 
sexuality  and  not  have  to  reckon  with  it.  A  woman  has  not 
her  sexuality  limited  to  periods  of  time,  nor  to  localised 
organs.  (And  so  it  happens  that  a  man  can  know  about  his 
sexuality,  whilst  a  woman  is  unconscious  of  it  and  can  in 
all  good  faith  deny  it,  because  she  is  nothing  but  sexuality, 
because  she  is  sexuality  itself.) 
vjt  is  impossible  for  women,  because  they  are  only  sexual 
to  recognise  their  sexuality,  because  recognition  of  anything 
requires  duality.  With  man  it  is  not  only  that  he  is  not 
merely  sexual,  but  anatomically  and  physiologically  he  can 
"  detach  "  himself  from  it.  That  is  why  he  has  the  power 
to  enter  into  whatever  sexual  relations  he  desires  ;  if  he 
likes  he  can  limit  or  increase  such  relations  ;  he  can  refuse 
or  assent  to  them.  He  can  play  the  part  of  a  Don  Juan  or 
a  monk.  He  can  assume  which  he  will.  To  put  it  bluntly, 
man  possesses  sexual  organs ;  her  sexual  organs  possess 
woman./ 

We  i^ay,  therefore,  deduce  from  the  previous  arguments 
that  man  has  the  power  of  consciousness  of  his  sexuality 
and  so  can  act  against  it,  whilst  the  woman  appears  to 
be  without  this  power.  This  implies,  moreover,  that  there  is 
greater  differentiation  in  man,  as  in  him  the  sexual  and  the 
unsexual  parts  of  his  nature  are  sharply  separated.  The 
possibility  or  impossibility  of  being  aware  of  a  particular 
definite  object  is,  however,  hardly  a  part  of  the  customary 
meaning  of  the  word  consciousness,  which  is  generally  used 
as  implying  that  if  a  being  is  conscious  he  can  be  conscious 
of  any  object.  This  brings  me  to  consider  the  nature  of 
the  female  consciousness,  and  I  must  take  a  long  detour  to 
consider  it. 


CHAPTER  III 

MALE  AND  FEMALE  CONSCIOUSNESS 

Before  proceeding  to  consider  the  main  difference  between 
the  psychical  hfe  of  the  sexes,  so  far  as  the  latter  takes 
subjective  and  objective  things  as  its  contents,  a  few  psy- 
chological soundings  must  be  taken,  and  conceptions 
formulated.  As  the  views  and  principles  of  prevailing 
systems  of  psychology  have  been  formed  without  con- 
sideration of  the  subject  of  this  book,  it  is  not  surprising 
that  they  contain  little  that  I  am  able  to  use.  (At  present 
there  is  no  psychology  but  many  psychologists^  and  it 
would  really  be  a  matter  of  caprice  on  my  part  to  choose 
any  particular  school  and  attempt  to  apply  its  principles 
to  my  subject.  I  shall  rather  try  to  lay  down  a  few  useful 
principles  on  my  own  account. 

The  endeavours  to  reach  a  comprehensive  and  unifying 
conception  of  the  whole  psychical  process  by  referring  it  to 
a  single  principle  have  been  particularly  evident  in  the 
relations  between  perceptions  and  sensations  suggested  by 
different  psychologists.  Herbart,  for  instance,  derived 
the  sensations  from  elementary  ideas,  whilst  Horwicz 
supposed  them  to  come  from  perceptions.  Most  modern 
psychologists  have  insisted  that  such  monistic  attempts 
must  be  fruitless.  None  the  less  there  was  some  truth  in 
the  view. 

/To  discover  this  truth,  however,  it  is  necessary  to  make  a 
distinction  that  has  been  overlooked  by  modern  workers. 
We  must  distinguish  between  the  perceiving  of  a  percep- 
tion, feeling  of  a  sensation,  thinking  a  thought  from  the 
later  repetitions  of  the  process  in  which  recognition  plays  a 


94  SEX  AND  CHARACTER 

part.  In  many  cases  this  distinction  is  of  fundamental 
importance. 

Every  simple,  clear,  plastic  perception  and  every  distinct 
idea,  before  it  could  be  put  into  words,  passes  through  a 
stage  (which  may  indeed  be  very  short)  of  indistinctness. 
So  also  in  the  case  of  association  ;  for  a  longer  or  shorter 
time  before  the  elements  about  to  be  grouped  have  actually 
come  together,  there  is  a  sort  of  vague,  generalised  expecta- 
tion or  presentiment  of  association^  Leibnitz,  in  particular, 
has  worked  at  kindred  processes,  and  I  believe  them  to 
underlie  the  attempts  of  Herbart  and  Horwicz. 

The  common  acceptance  of  pleasure  and  pain  as  the 
fundamental  sensations,  even  with  Wundt's  addition  of  the 
sensations  of  tension  and  relaxation,  of  rest  and  stimulation, 
makes  the  division  of  psychical  phenomena  into  sensations 
and  perceptions  too  narrow  for  due  treatment  of  the  vague 
preliminary  stages  to  which  I  have  referred.  I  shall  go  back 
therefore  to  the  widest  classification  of  psychical  phenomena 
that  I  know  of,  that  of  Avenarius  into  "  elements "  and 
"  characters."  The  word  "  character  "  in  this  connection, 
of  course,  has  nothing  to  do  with  the  subject  of  charac- 
terology. 

Avenarius  added  to  the  difficulty  of  applying  his  theories 
by  his  use  of  a  practically  new  terminology  (which  is  cer- 
tainly most  striking  and  indispensable  for  some  of  the  new 
views  he  expounded).  But  what  stands  most  in  the  way  of 
accepting  some  of  his  conclusions  is  his  desire  to  derive  his 
psychology  from  the  physiology  of  the  brain,  a  physiology 
which  he  evolved  himself  out  of  his  inner  consciousness 
with  only  a  slight  general  acquaintance  with  actual  biological 
facts.  The  psychological,  or  second  part  of  his  "  Critique 
of  Pure  Experience,"  was  really  the  source  from  which  he 
derived  the  first  or  physiological  part,  with  the  result  that 
the  latter  appears  to  its  readers  as  an  account  of  some  dis- 
covery in  Atlantis.  Because  of  these  difficulties  I  shall 
give  here  a  short  account  of  the  system  of  Avenarius,  as  I 
find  it  useful  for  my  thesis. 

An  "  Element "  in  the  sense  of  Avenarius  represents  what 


MALE  AND  FEMALE  CONSCIOUSNESS    95 

thV usual  psychology  terms  a  perception^  or  the  content  of  a 
perception,  what  Schopenhauer  called  a  presentation,  what 
in  England  is  called  an  "  impression "  or  "  idea,"  the 
"  thing,"  "  fact,"  or  "object"  of  ordinary  language;  and 
the  word  is  used  independently  of  the  presence  or  absence 
of  a  special  sense-organ  stimulation — a  most  important  and 
novel  addition.  In  the  sense  of  Avenarius,  and  for  our 
purpose,  it  is  a  matter  of  indifference  to  the  terminology  how 
far  what  is  called  "  analysis  "  takes  place,  the  whole  tree  may 
be  taken  as  the  "  element,"  or  each  single  leaf,  or  each  hair, 
or  (where  most  people  would  stop),  the  colours,  sizes, 
weights,  temperatures,  resistances,  and  so  forth.  Still,  the 
analysis  may  go  yet  further,  and  the  colour  of  the  leaf  may 
be  taken  as  merely  the  resultant  of  its  quality,  intensity, 
luminosity,  and  so  forth,  these  being  the  elements.  Or  we 
may  go  still  further  and  take  modern  ultimate  conceptions 
reaching  units  incapable  of  sub-division. 

In  the  sense  of  Avenarius,  then,  elements  are  such  ideas 
as  "green,"  "blue,"  "cold,"  "warm,"  "soft,"  "hard," 
"sweet,"  "bitter,"  and  their  "character"  is  the  particular 
kind  of  quality  with  which  they  appear,  not  merely  their 
pleasantness  or  unpleasantness,  but  also  such  modes  of 
presentation  as  "surprising,"  "expected,"  "novel,"  "in- 
different," "recognised,"  "known,"  "actual,"  "doubtful," 
categories  which  Avenarius  first  recognised  as  being  psycho- 
logical. For  instance,  what  I  guess,  believe,  or  know  is  an 
"  element "  ;  the  fact  that  I  guess  it,  not  believe  it  or  know 
it,  is  the  "  character  "  in  which  it  presents  itself  psycho- 
logically (not  logically). 

Now  there  is  a  stage  in  mental  activity  in  which  this 
sub-division  of  psychical  phenomena  cannot  be  made, 
which  is  too  early  for  it.  All  "  elements  "  at  their  first 
appearance  are  merged  with  the  floating  background,  the 
whole  being  vaguely  tinged  by  "  character."  To  follow 
my  meaning,  think  of  what  takes  place,  when  for  the  first 
time  at  a  distance  one  sees  something  in  the  landscape, 
such  as  a  shrub  or  a  heap  of  wood,  at  the  moment  when 
one  does  not  yet  know  what  "  it "  is. 


96  SEX  AND  CHARACTER 

At  this  moment  "  element "  and  "  character  "  are  abso- 
lutely indistinguishable  (they  are  always  inseparable  as 
Petzoldt  ingeniously  pointed  out),  so  improving  the  original 
statement  of  Avenarius. 

In  a  dense  crowd  I  perceive,  for  instance,  a  face  which 
attracts  me  across  the  swaying  mass  by  its  expression.  I 
have  no  idea  what  the  face  is  like,  and  should  be  quite 
unable  to  describe  it  or  give  an  idea  of  it ;  but  it  has 
appealed  to  me  in  the  most  disturbing  manner,  and  I  find 
myself  asking  with  keen  curiosity,  "  Where  have  1  seen  that 
face  before  ?  " 

(^  man  may  see  the  head  of  a  woman  for  a  moment,  and 
this  may  make  a  very  strong  impression  on  him,  and  yet  he 
may  be  unable  to  say  exactly  what  he  has  seen,  or,  for 
instance,  be  able  to  remember  the  colour  of  her  hair.  The 
retina  must  be  exposed  to  the  object  sufficiently  long,  if 
only  a  fraction  of  a  second,  for  a  photographic  impression 
to  be  made.\ 

If  one  looks  at  any  object  from  a  considerable  distance 
one  has  at  first  only  the  vaguest  impression  of  its  outlines  ; 
and  as  one  comes  nearer  and  sees  the  details  more  clearly, 
lively  sensations,  at  first  lost  in  the  general  mass,  are 
received.  Think,  for  instance,  of  the  first  general  impres- 
sion of,  say,  the  sphenoid  bone  disarticulated  from  a  skull, 
or  of  many  pictures  seen  a  little  too  closely  or  a  little  too 
far  away.  I  myself  have  a  remembrance  of  having  had 
strong  impressions  from  sonatas  of  Beethoven  before  I 
knew  anything  of  the  musical  notes.  Avenarius  and  Petz- 
oldt have  overlooked  the  fact  that  the  coming  into  con- 
sciousness of  the  elements  is  accompanied  by  a  kind  of 
secretion  of  characterisation. 

Some  of  the  simple  experiments  of  physiological  psy- 
chology illustrate  the  point  to  which  I  have  been  referring. 
If  one  stays  in  a  dark  room  until  the  eye  has  adapted  itself 
to  the  absence  of  light,  and  then  for  a  second  subjects 
oneself  to  a  ray  of  coloured  light,  a  sensation  of  illumina- 
tion will  be  received,  although  it  is  impossible  to  recognise 
the   quality    of    the   illumination ;     something    has    been 


MALE  AND  FEMALE  CONSCIOUSNESS     97 

perceived,  but  what  the  something  is  cannot  be  apprehended 
unless  the  stimulation  lasts  a  definite  time.  . 

yn  the  same  way  every  scientific  discovery,  every  tech- 
nical  invention,  every  artistic  creation  passes  through  a 
preliminary  phase  of  indistinctness.  The  process  is  similar 
to  the  series  of  impressions  that  would  be  got  as  a  statue 
was  gradually  unwrapped  from  a  series  of  swathings.  The 
same  kind  of  sequence  occurs,  although,  perhaps,  in  a  very 
brief  space  of  time,  when  one  is  trying  to  recall  a  piece  of 
music.  Every  thought  is  preceded  by  a  kind  of  half- 
thought,  a  condition  in  which  vague  geometrical  figures, 
shifting  masks,  a  swaying  and  indistinct  background  hover 
in  the  mind.  The  beginning  and  the  end  of  the  whole 
process,  which  I  may  term  "  clarification,"  are  what  take 
place  when  a  short-sighted  person  proceeds  to  look  through 
properly  adapted  lenses^ 

Just  as  this  process  occurs  in  the  life  of  the  individual 
(and  he,  indeed,  may  die  long  before  it  is  complete),  so  it 
occurs  in  history.  \Definite  scientific  conceptions  are  pre- 
ceded by  anticipations.  The  process  of  clarification  is 
spread  over  many  generations.  There  were  ancient  and 
modern  vague  anticipations  of  the  theory  of  Darwin  and 
Lamarck,  anticipations  which  we  are  now  apt  to  overvalue. 
Mayer  and  Helmholz  had  their  predecessors,  and  Goethe 
and  Leonardo  da  Vinci,  perhaps  two  of  the  most  many-sided 
intellects  known  to  us,  anticipated  in  a  vague  way  many  of 
the  conclusions  of  modern  science.  The  whole  history  of 
thought  is  a  continuous  "  clarification,"  a  more  and  more 
accurate  description  or  realisation  of  details.  The  enormous 
number  of  stages  between  light  and  darkness,  the  minute 
gradations  of  detail  that  follow  each  other  in  the  develop- 
ment of  thought  can  be  realised  best  if  one  follows  histori- 
cally some  complicated  modern  piece  of  knowledge,  such 
as,  for  instance,  the  theory  of  elliptical  functions^ 

The  process  of  clarification  may  be  reversed,  and  the  act 
of  forgetting  is  such  a  reversal.  This  may  take  a  consider- 
able time,  and  is  usually  noticed  only  by  accident  at  some 
point  or  other  of  its  course.     The  process  is  similar  to  the 

G 


98  SEX  AND  CHARACTER 

gradual  obliteration  of  well-made  roads,  for  the  maintenance 
of  which  no  provision  has  been  made.  The  faint  anticipa- 
tions of  a  thought  are  very  like  the  faint  recollections  of  it, 
and  the  latter  gradually  become  blurred  as  in  the  case  of  a 
neglected  road  over  the  boundaries  of  which  animals  stray, 
slowly  obliterating  it.  In  this  connection  a  practical  rule 
for  memorising,  discovered  and  applied  by  a  friend  of  mine, 
is  interesting.  It  generally  happens  that  if  one  wants  to 
learn,  say,  a  piece  of  music,  or  a  section  from  the  history  of 
philosophy,  one  has  to  go  over  parts  of  it  again  and  again. 
The  problem  was,  how  long  should  the  intervals  be  between 
these  successive  attempts  to  commit  to  memory  ?  The 
answer  was  that  they  should  not  be  so  long  as  to  make  it 
possible  to  take  a  fresh  interest  in  the  subject  again,  to  be 
interested  and  curious  about  it.  If  the  interval  has  produced 
that  state  of  mind,  then  the  process  of  clarification  must  begin 
from  the  beginning  again.  The  rather  popular  physiological 
theory  of  Sigismund  Exner  as  to  the  formation  of  "paths" 
in  the  nervous  system  may  perhaps  be  taken  as  a  physical 
parallel  of  the  process  of  clarification.  According  to  the 
theory,  the  ne'-ves,  or  rather  the  fibrils,  make  paths  easy  for 
the  stimulations  to  travel  along,  if  these  stimulations  last 
sufficiently  long  or  are  repeated  sufficiently  often.  So  also 
in  the  case  of  forgetting ;  what  happens  is  that  these  paths 
or  processes  of  the  nerve-cells  atrophy  from  disuse.  Ave- 
narius  would  have  explained  the  above  processes  by  his 
theory  of  the  articulation  of  the  fibres  of  the  brain,  but  his 
physical  doctrine  was  rather  too  crude  and  too  simple  for 
application  to  psycho-physics.  None  the  less  his  conception 
of  articulation  or  jointing  is  both  convenient  and  appropriate 
in  its  application  to  the  process  of  clarification,  and  I  shall 
employ  it  in  that  connection. 

The  process  of  clarification  must  be  traced  thoroughly  in 
order  to  realise  its  importance,  but  for  the  moment,  it  is 
important  to  consider  only  the  initial  stage.  The  distinction 
of  Avenarius  between  "  element "  and  "  character,"  which 
later  on  will  become  evident  in  a  process  of  clarification,  is 
not  applicable  to  the  very  earliest  moments  of  the  process. 


MALE  AND  FEMALE  CONSCIOUSNESS    99 

It  is  necessary  to  coin  a  name  for  those  minds  to  which  the 
duahty  of  element  and  character  becomes  appreciable  at  no 
stage  of  the  process.  I  propose  for  psychical  data  at  this 
earliest  stage  of  their  existence  the  word  Hen  id  (from  the 
Greek  h,  because  in  them  it  is  impossible  to  distinguish 
perception  and  sensation  as  two  analytically  separable  factors, 
and  because,  therefore,  there  is  no  trace  of  duality  in  them). 

Naturally  the  "henid"  is  an  abstract  conception  and  may 
not  occur  in  the  absolute  form.  How  often  psychical  data 
in  human  beings  actually  stand  at  this  absolute  extreme  of 
undifferentiation  is  uncertain  and  unimportant ;  but  the 
theory  does  not  need  to  concern  itself  with  the  possibility 
of  such  an  extreme.  A  common  example  from  what  has 
happened  to  all  of  us  may  serve  to  illustrate  what  a  henid 
is.  I  may  have  a  definite  wish  to  say  something  particular, 
and  then  something  distracts  me,  and  the  '*  it "  I  wanted  to 
say  or  thmk  has  gone.  Later  on,  by  some  process  of  asso- 
ciation, the  "  it "  IS  quite  suddenly  reproduced,  and  I  know 
at  once  that  it  was  what  was  on  my  tongue,  but,  so  to  speak, 
in  a  more  perfect  stage  of  development. 

I  fear  lest  some  one  may  expect  me  to  describe  exactly 
what  I  mean  by  "  henid."  The  wish  can  come  only  from  a 
misconception.  The  very  idea  of  a  henid  forbids  its  de- 
scription ;  it  is  merely  a  something.  Later  on  identification 
will  come  with  the  complete  articulation  of  the  contents  of 
the  henid  ;  but  the  henid  is  not  the  whole  of  this  detailed 
content,  but  is  distinguished  from  it  by  a  lower  grade  of 
consciousness,  by  an  absence  of,  so  to  speak,  relief,  by  a 
blending  of  the  die  and  the  impression,  by  the  absence  of 
a  central  point  in  the  field  of  vision. 

And  so  one  cannot  describe  particular  henids  ;  one  can 
only  be  conscious  of  their  existence. 

None  the  less  henids  are  things  as  vital  as  elements  and 
characters.  Each  henid  is  an  individual  and  can  be  dis- 
tinguished from  other  henids.  Later  on  I  shall  show  that 
probably  the  mental  data  of  early  childhood  (certainly  of 
the  first  fourteen  months)  are  all  henids,  although  perhaps 
not  in  the  absolute   sense.    Throughout   childhood   these 


100  SEX  AND  CHARACTER 

data  do  not  reach  far  from  the  henid  stage  ;  in  adults  there 
is  always  a  certain  process  of  development  going  on. 
Probably  the  perceptions  of  some  plants  and  animals  are 
henids.  \[n  the  case  of  mankind  the  development  from  the 
henid  to  the  completely  differentiated  perception  and  idea 
is  always  possible,  although  such  an  ideal  condition  may 
seldom  be  attained)  ^Whilst  expression  in  words  is  im- 
possible in  the  case  of  the  absolute  henid,  as  words  imply 
articulated  thoughts,  there  are  also  in  the  highest  stages  of 
the  intellect  possible  to  man  some  things  still  unclarified 
and,  therefore,  unspeakable^ 

The  theory  of  henids  will  help  in  the  old  quarrel  between 
the  spheres  of  perception  and  sensation,  and  will  replace  by 
a  developmental  conception  the  ideas  of  element  and 
charater  which  Avenarius  and  Petzoldt  deduced  from  the 
process  of  clarification.  It  is  only  when  the  elements 
become  distinct  that  they  can  be  distinguished  from  the 
characters.  Man  is  disposed  to  humours  and  sentimentali- 
ties only  so  long  as  the  contours  of  his  ideas  are  vague  ; 
when  he  sees  things  in  the  light  instead  of  the  dark  his 
process  of  thinking  will  become  different. 

Now  what  is  the  relation  between  the  investigation  I  have 
been  making  and  the  psychology  of  the  sexes  ?  What  is 
the  distinction  between  the  male  and  the  female  (and  to 
reach  this  has  been  the  object  of  my  digression)  in  the 
process  of  clarification  ? 

Here  is  my  answer  : 

The  male  has  the  same  psychical  data  as  the  female,  but 
in  a  more  articulated  form  ;  where  she  thinks  more  or  less 
in  henids,  he  thinks  in  more  or  less  clear  and  detailed  pre- 
sentations in  which  the  elements  are  distinct  from  the  tones  of 
feeling,  s^ith  the  woman,  thinking  and  feeling  are  identical, 
for  man  they  are  in  opposition.  The  woman  has  many  of 
her  mental  experiences  as  henids,  whilst  in  man  these  have 
passed  through  a  process  of  clarification.  Woman  is  senti- 
mental, and  knows  emotion  but  not  mental  excitement^ 

The  greater  articulation  of  the  mental  data  in  man  is 
reflected  in  the  more  marked  character  of  his  body  and 


MALE  AND  FEMALE  CONSCIOUSNESS  loi 

face,  as  compared  with  the  roundness  and  vagueness  of  the 
woman.  In  the  same  connection  it  is  to  be  remembered 
that,  notwithstanding  the  popular  behef,  the  senses  of  the 
male  are  much  more  acute  than  those  of  the  woman.  The 
only  exception  is  the  sense  of  touch,  an  exception  of  great 
interest  to  which  I  shall  refer  later.  It  has  been  established, 
moreover,  that  the  sensibility  to  pain  is  much  more  acute  in 
man,  and  we  have  now  learned  to  distinguish  between  that 
and  the  tactile  sensations. 

A  weaker  sensibility  is  likely  to  retard  the  passage  of 
mental  data  through  the  process  of  clarification,  although 
we  cannot  quite  take  it  for  granted  that  it  must  be  so. 
Perhaps  a  more  trustworthy  proof  of  the  less  degree  of 
articulation  in  the  mental  data  of  the  woman  may  be  drawn 
from  consideration  of  the  greater  decision  in  the  judgments 
made  by  men,  although  indeed  it  may  be  the  case  that  this 
distinction  rests  on  a  deeper  basis.  It  is  certainly  the  case 
that  whilst  we  are  still  near  the  henid  stage  we  know  much 
more  certainly  what  a  thing  is  not  than  what  it  is.  What 
Mach  has  called  instinctive  experience  depends  on  henids. 
While  we  are  near  the  henid  stage  we  think  round  about  a 
subject,  correct  ourselves  at  each  new  attempt,  and  say  that 
that  was  not  yet  the  right  word.  Naturally  that  condition 
implies  uncertainty  and  indecision  in  judgment.  Judgment 
comes  towards  the  end  of  the  process  of  clarification  ;  the 
act  of  judgment  is  in  itself  a  departure  from  the  henid  stage. 
/The  most  decisive  proof  for  the  correctness  of  the  view 
that  attributes  henids  to  woman  and  differentiated  thoughts 
to  man,  and  that  sees  in  this  a  fundamental  sexual  distinction, 
lies  in  the  fact  that  wherever  a  new  judgment  is  to  be  made, 
(not  merely  something  already  settled  to  be  put  into  pro- 
verbial form)  it  is  always  the  case  that  the  female  expects 
from  man  the  clarification  of  her  data,  the  interpretation  of 
her  henids.  It  is  almost  a  tertiary  sexual  character  of  the 
male,  and  certainly  it  acts  on  the  female  as  such,  that  she 
expects  from  him  the  interpretation  and  illumination  of  her 
thoughts.  It  is  from  this  reason  that  so  many  girls  say  that 
they  could  only  marry,  or,  at  least,  only  love  a  man  who  was 


I02  SEX  AND  CHARACTER 

cleverer  than  themselves  ;  that  they  would  be  repelled  by  a 
man  who  said  that  all  they  thought  was  right,  and  did  not 
know  better  than  they  did.  In  short,  the  woman  makes  it  a 
criterion  of  manliness  that  the  man  should  be  superior  to 
herself  mentally,  that  she  should  be  influenced  and  domi- 
nated by  the  man  ;  and  this  in  itself  is  enough  to  ridicule  all 
ideas  of  sexual  equalityX 

SThe  male  lives  consciously,  the  female  lives  unconsciously. 
This  is  certainly  the  necessary  conclusion  for  the  extreme 
cases.  The  woman  receives  her  consciousness  from  the 
man  ;  the  function  to  bring  into  consciousness  what  was 
outside  it  is  a  sexual  function  of  the  typical  man  with 
regard  to  the  typical  woman,  and  is  a  necessary  part  of  his 
ideal  completeness^ 

And  now  we  are  brought  up  against  the  problem  of 
talent ;  the  whole  modern  woman  question  appears  to  be 
resolving  itself  into  a  dispute  as  to  whether  men  or  women 
are  more  highly  gifted.  As  the  question  is  generally  pro- 
pounded there  is  no  attempt  to  distinguish  between  the 
pure  types  of  sex  ;  the  conclusions  with  regard  to  these  that 
I  have  been  able  to  set  forth  have  an  important  bearing  on 
the  answer  to  the  question. 


CHAPTER   IV 

TALENT  AND  GENIUS 

There  has  been  so  much  written  about  the  nature  of  genius 
that,  to  avoid  misunderstanding,  it  will  be  better  to  make  a 
few  general  remarks  before  going  into  the  subject. 

And  the  first  thing  to  do  is  to  settle  the  question  of 
talent.  Genius  and  talent  are  nearly  always  connected  in 
the  popular  idea,  as  if  the  first  were  a  higher,  or  the  highest, 
grade  of  the  latter,  and  as  if  a  man  of  very  high  and  varied 
talents  might  be  a  sort  of  intermediate  between  the  two. 
This  view  is  entirely  erroneous.  Even  if  there  were 
different  degrees  or  grades  of  genius,  they  would  have 
absolutely  nothing  to  do  with  so-called  "  talent."  A 
talent,  for  instance  the  mathematical  talent,  may  be 
possessed  by  some  one  in  a  very  high  degree  from  birth  ; 
and  he  will  be  able  to  master  the  most  difficult  problems  of 
that  science  with  ease ;  but  for  this  he  will  require  no 
genius,  which  is  the  same  as  originality,  individuality,  and 
a  condition  of  general  productiveness. 

On  the  other  hand,  there  are  men  of  great  genius  who 
have  shown  no  special  talent  in  any  marked  degree  ;  for 
instance,  men  like  Novalis  or  Jean  Paul.  Genius  is  dis- 
tinctly not  the  superlative  of  talent ;  there  is  a  world-wide 
difference  between  the  two  ;  they  are  of  absolutely  unlike 
nature  ;  they  can  neither  be  measured  by  one  another  or 
compared  to  each  other. 

vfalent  is  hereditary  ;  it  may  be  the  common  possession 
of  a  whole  family  {e.g.,  the  Bach  family)  ;  genius  is  not 
transmitted  ;  it  is  never  diffused,  but  is  strictly  individual/ 

Many   ill-balanced    people,   and    in    particular  women, 


104  SEX  AND  CHARACTER 

regard  genius  and  talent  as  identical.  Women,  indeed, 
have  not  the  faculty  of  appreciating  genius,  although  this 
is  not  the  common  view.  Any  extravagance  that  distin- 
guishes a  man  from  other  men  appeals  equally  to  their 
sexual  ambition  ;  they  confuse  the  dramatist  with  the  actor, 
and  make  no  distinction  between  the  virtuoso  and  the  artist. 
For  them  the  talented  man  is  the  man  of  genius,  and 
Nietzsche  is  the  type  of  what  they  consider  genius.  What 
has  been  called  the  French  type  of  thought,  which  so 
strongly  appeals  to  them,  has  nothing  to  do  with  the  \ 
highest  possibilities  of  the  mind.  {Great  men  take  them- 
selves and  the  world  too  seriously  to  become  what  is  called 
merely  intellectual.  Men  who  are  merely  intellectual  are 
insincere  ;  they  are  people  who  have  never  really  been 
deeply  engrossed  by  things  and  who  do  not  feel  an  over- 
powering desire  for  production.  All  that  they  care  about  is 
that  their  work  should  glitter  and  sparkle  like  a  well-cut 
stone,  not  that  it  should  illuminate  anything.  They  are 
more  occupied  with  what  will  be  said  of  what  they  think  { 
than  by  the  thoughts  themselvesN  There  are  men  who  are 
willing  to  marry  a  woman  they  do  not  care  about  merely 
because  she  is  admired  by  other  men.  Such  a  relation 
exists  between  many  men  and  their  thoughts.  I  cannot 
help  thinking  of  one  particular  living  author,  a  blaring,' 
outrageous  person,  who  fancies  that  he  is  roaring  when  he 
is  only  snarling.  Unfortunately,  Nietzsche  (however 
superior  he  is  to  the  man  I  have  in  mind)  seems  to  have 
devoted  himself  chiefly  to  what  he  thought  would  shock 
the  public.  He  is  at  his  best  when  he  is  most  unmindful 
of  effect.  His  was  the  vanity  of  the  mirror,  saying  to  what 
it  reflects,  "  See  how  faithfully  I  show  you  your  image." 
In  youth  when  a  man  is  not  yet  certain  of  himself  he  may 
try  to  secure  his  own  position  by  jostling  others.  ^Great 
men,  hcwevef,  ;ire  painfully  ni^j'-^'T-si'/c  only  from  f^xes^^y.) 
They  are  not  like  a  girl  who  is  most  pleased  about  a  new 
dress  because  she  knows  that  it  will  annoy  her  frier^ds. 

Genius  !  genius  !  how  much  mental  disturbance  and  dis- 
comfort, hatred  and  envy,  jealousy  and  pettiness,  has  it  not 


TALENT  AND  GENIUS  105 

aroused  in  the  majority  of  men,  and  how  much  counterfeit 
and  tinsel  has  the  desire  for  it  not  occasioned  ? 

I  turn  gladly  from  the  imitations  of  genius  to  the  thing 
itself  and  its  true  embodiment.  But  where  can  I  begin  ? 
All  the  qualities  that  go  to  make  genius  are  in  so  intimate 
connection  that  to  begin  with  any  one  of  them  seems  to 
lead  to  premature  conclusions. 

All  discussions  on  the  nature  of  genius  are  either  biologi- 
cal-clinical, and  serve  only  to  show  the  absurd  presumption 
of  present  knowledge  of  this  kind  in  its  hope  to  solve  a 
problem  so  difficult  ;  or  they  descend  from  the  heights  of  a 
metaphysical  system  for  the  sole  purpose  of  including 
genius  in  their  purview.  If  the  road  that  I  am  about  to 
take  does  not  lead  to  every  goal  at  once,  it  is  only  because 
that  is  the  nature  of  roads. 

Consider  how  much  deeper  a  great  poet  can  reach  into 
the  nature  of  man  than  an  average  person.  Think  of  the 
extraordinary  number  of  characters  depicted  by  Shakespeare 
or  Euripides,  or  the  marvellous  assortment  of  human  beings 
that  fill  the  pages  of  Zola.  After  the  Penthesilea,  Heinrich 
von  Kleist  created  Kätchen  von  Heilbronn,  and  Michael 
Angelo  embodied  from  his  imagination  the  Delphic  Sibyls 
and  the  Leda.  CThere  have  been  few  men  so  little  devoted 
to  art  as  Kant  and  Schelling,  and  yet  these  have  written 
most  profoundly  and  truly  about  ity  In  order  to  depict  a 
man  one  must  understand  him,  and  to  understand  him  one 
must  be  like  him  ;  in  order  to  portray  his  psychological 
activities  one  must  be  able  to  reproduce  them  in  oneself. 
To  understand  a  man  one  must  have  his  nature  in  oneself. 
One  must  be  like  the  mind  one  tries  to  grasp.  It  takes  a 
thief  to  know  a  thief,  and  only  an  innocent  man  can  under- 
stand another  innocent  man.  The  poseur  only  understands 
other  poseurs,  and  sees  nothing  but  pose  in  the  actions  of 
others  ;  whilst  the  simple-minded  fails  to  understand  the 
most  flagrant  pose.  ^To  understand  a  man  is  really  to  be 
that  man) 

It  would  seem  to  follow  that  a  man  can  best  understand 
himself — a  conclusion  plainly  absurd.     No  one  can  under- 


io6  SEX  AND  CHARACTER 

stand  himself,  for  to  do  that  he  would  have  to  get  outside 
himself ;  the  subject  of  the  knowing  and  willing  activity 
would  have  to  become  its  own  object.  To  grasp  the 
universe  it  would  be  necessary  to  get  a  standpoint  outside 
the  universe,  and  the  possibility  of  such  a  standpoint  is 
incompatible  with  the  idea  of  a  universe.  He  who  could 
understand  himself  could  understand  the  world.  I  do  not 
make  the  statement  merely  as  an  explanation  :  it  contains 
an  important  truth,  to  the  significance  of  which  I  shall 
recur.  For  the  present  I  am  content  to  assert  that  no  one 
can  understand  his  deepest,  most  intimate  nature.  This 
happens  in  actual  practice  ;  when  one  wishes  to  understand 
in  a  general  way,  it  is  always  from  other  persons,  never 
from  oneself,  that  one  gets  one's  materials.  The  other 
person  chosen  must  be  similar  in  some  respect,  however 
different  as  a  whole  ;  and,  making  use  of  this  similarity,  he 
can  recognise,  represent,  comprehend.  So  far  as  one  under- 
stands a  man,  one  is  that  man. 

^he  man  of  genius  takes  his  place  in  the  above  argument 
as  he  who  understands  incomparably  more  other  beings 
than  the  average  man.  Goethe  is  said  to  have  said  of  him- 
self that  there  was  no  vice  or  crime  of  which  he  could  not 
trace  the  tendency  in  himself,  and  that  at  some  period  of 
his  life  he  could  not  have  understood  fully.  The  genius, 
therefore,  is  a  more  complicated,  more  richly  endowed, 
more  varied  man  ;  and  a  man  is  the  closer  to  being  a 
genius  the  more  men  Jie  has  in  hi'^  personalitv,  and  the 
more  really  and  strongly  he  has  these  others  within  himy 
If  comprehension  of  those  about  him  only  flickers  in  him 
like  a  poor  candle,  then  he  is  unable,  like  the  great  poet,  to 
kindle  a  mighty  flame  in  his  heroes,  to  give  distinction  and 
character  to  his  creations.  The  ideal  of  an  artistic  genius 
is  to  live  in  all  men,  to  lose  himself  in  all  men,  to  reveal 
himself  in  multitudes  ;  and  so  also  the  aim  of  the 
philosopher  is  to  discover  all  others  in  himself,  to  fuse 
them  into  a  unit  which  is  his  own  unit. 

This  protean  character  of  genius  is  no  more  simultaneous 
than  the  bi-sexuality  of  which  I  have  spoken.     Even  the 


TALENT  AND  GENIUS  107 

greatest  genius  cannot  understand  the  nature  of  all  men  at 
the  same  time,  on  one  and  the  same  day.  The  compre- 
hensive and  manifold  rudiments  which  a  man  possesses  in 
his  mind  can  develop  only  slowly  and  by  degrees  with  the 
gradual  unfolding  of  his  whole  life.  It  appears  almost  as  if 
there  were  a  definite  periodicity  in  his  development.  These 
periods,  v^'hen  they  recur,  however,  are  not  exactly  alike  ; 
they  are  not  mere  repetitions,  but  are  intensifications  of 
their  predecessors,  on  a  higher  plane.  No  two  moments  in 
the  life  of  an  individual  are  exactly  alike  ;  there  is  between 
the  later  and  the  earlier  periods  only  the  similarity  of 
the  higher  and  lower  parts  of  a  spiral  ascent.  Thus 
it  has  frequently  happened  that  famous  men  have  con- 
ceived a  piece  of  work  in  their  early  youth,  laid  it  aside 
during  manhood,  and  resumed  and  completed  it  in  old  age. 
Periods  exist  in  every  man,  but  in  different  degrees  and 
with  varying  "amplitude."  Just  as  the  genius  is  the  man 
who  contains  in  himself  the  greatest  number  of  others  in 
the  most  active  way,  so  the  amplitude  of  a  man's  periods 
will  be  the  greater  the  wider  his  mental  relations  may  be. 
Qllustrious  men  have  often  been  told,  by  their  teachers,  in 
their  youth  "  that  they  were  always  in  one  extreme  or 
another."  As  if  they  could  be  anything  else !  These 
transitions  in  the  case  of  unusual  men  often  assume  the 
character  of  a  crisis.  Goethe  once  spoke  of  the  "  recurrence 
of  puberty"  in  an  artist.  The  idea  is  obviously  to  be 
associated  with  the  matter  under  discussion/^ 

It  results  from  their  periodicity  that,  in  men  of  genius, 
sterile  years  precede  productive  years,  these  again  to  be 
followed  by  sterility,  the  barren  periods  being  marked  by 
psychological  self-depreciation,  by  the  feeling  that  they 
are  less  than  other  men  ;  times  in  which  the  remembrance 
of  the  creative  periods  is  a  torment,  and  when  they  envy 
those  who  go  about  undisturbed  by  such  penalties.  Just  as 
his  moments  of  ecstasy  are  more  poignant,  so  are  the 
periods  of  depression  of  a  man  of  genius  more  intense  than 
those  of  other  men.  Every  great  man  has  such  periods,  of 
longer  or   shorter  duration,  times  in  which  he  loses  self- 


io8  SEX  AND  CHARACTER 

confidence,  in  which  he  thinks  of  suicide  ;  times  in  which, 
indeed,  he  may  be  sowing  the  seeds  of  a  future  harvest,  but 
which  are  devoid  of  the  stimulus  to  production ;  times 
which  call  forth  the  blind  criticisms  "  How  such  a  genius 
is  degenerating!"  "How  he  has  played  himself  out!" 
"  How  he  repeats  himself  !  "  and  so  forth. 

It  is  just  the  same  with  other  characteristics  of  the  man 
of  genius.  Not  only  the  material,  but  also  the  spirit,  of  his 
work  is  subject  to  periodic  change.  At  one  time  he  is  in- 
clined to  a  philosophical  and  scientific  view  ;  at  another 
time  the  artistic  influence  is  strongest  ;  at  one  time  his 
intervals  are  altogether  in  the  direction  of  history  and  the 
growth  of  civilisation  ;  later  on  it  is  "  nature  "  (compare 
Nietzsche's  "Studies  in  Infinity"  with  his  "Zarathustra  ")  ; 
at  another  time  he  is  a  mystic,  at  yet  another  simplicity 
itself !  (Björnson  and  Maurice  Maeterlinck  are  good  modern 
examples.)  In  fact,  the  "  amplitude  "  of  the  periods  of  famous 
men  is  so  great,  the  different  revelations  of  their  nature  so 
various,  so  many  different  individuals  appear  in  them,  that 
the  periodicity  of  their  mental  life  may  be  taken  almost  as 
diagnostic.  I  must  make  a  remark  sufiiciently  obvious 
from  all  this,  as  to  the  existence  of  almost  incredibly  great 
changes  in  the  personal  appearance  of  men  of  genius  from 
time  to  time.  Comparison  of  the  portraits  at  different 
times  of  Goethe,  Beethoven,  Kant,  or  Schopenhauer  are 
enough  to  establish  this.  The  number  of  different  aspects 
that  the  face  of  a  man  has  assumed  may  be  taken  almost  as 
a  physiognomical  measure  of  his  talent.* 

People  with  an  unchanging  expression  are  low  in  the 
intellectual  scale.  Physiognomists,  therefore,  must  not  be 
surprised  that  men  of  genius,  in  whose  faces  a  new  side  of 
their  minds  is  continually  being  revealed,  are  difficult  to 
classify,  and  that  their  individualities  leave  little  permanent 
mark  on  their  features. 

*  I  cannot  help  using  the  word  "  talent  "  from  time  to  time, 
when  I  really  mean  genius  ;  but  I  wish  it  to  be  remembered  that  I 
am  convinced  of  the  existence  of  a  fundamental  distinction  between 
"  talent,"  or  "  giftedness,"  and  "  genius." 


TALENT  AND  GENIUS  109 

It  is  possible  that  my  introductory  description  of  genius 
will  be  repudiated  indignantly,  because  it  would  imply  that 
a  Shakespeare  has  the  vulgarity  of  his  Falstaff,  the  rascality 
of  his  lago,  the  boorishness  of  his  Caliban,  and  because  it 
identifies  great  men  with  all  the  low  and  contemptible 
things  that  they  have  described.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  men 
of  genius  do  conform  to  my  description,  and  as  their 
biographies  show,  are  liable  to  the  strangest  passions  and 
the  most  repulsive  instincts.  And  yet  the  objection  is 
invalid,  as  the  fuller  exposition  of  the  thesis  will  reveal. 
Only  the  most  superficial  survey  of  the  argument  could 
support  it,  whilst  the  exactly  opposite  conclusion  is  a  much 
more  likely  inference.  Zola,  who  has  so  faithfully  de- 
scribed the  impulse  to  commit  murder,  did  not  himself 
commit  a  murder,  because  there  were  so  many  other 
characters  in  him.  The  actual  murderer  is  in  the  grasp  of 
his  own  disposition  :  the  author  describing  the  murder  is 
swayed  by  a  whole  kingdom  of  impulses.  Zola  would 
know  the  desire  for  murder  much  better  than  the  actual 
murderer  would  know  it,  he  would  recognise  it  in  himself, 
if  it  really  came  to  the  surface  in  him,  and  he  would  be 
prepared  for  it.  In  such  ways  the  criminal  instincts  in  great 
men  are  intellectualised  and  turned  to  artistic  purposes  as 
in  the  case  of  Zola,  or  to  philosophic  purposes  as  with 
Kant,  but  not  to  actual  crime. 

The  presence  of  a  multitude  of  possibilities  in  great  men 
has  important  consequences  connected  with  the  theory  of 
henids  that  I  elaborated  in  the  last  chapter.  A  man  under- 
stands what  he  already  has  within  himself  much  more 
quickly  than  what  is  foreign  to  him  (were  it  otherwise  there 
would  be  no  intercourse  possible  :  as  it  is  we  do  not  realise 
how  often  we  fail  to  understand  one  another).  To  the 
genius,  who  understands  so  much  more  than  the  average 
man,  much  more  will  be  apparent. 

The  schemer  will  readily  recognise  his  fellow  ;  an  im- 
passioned player  easily  reads  the  same  power  in  another 
person  ;  whilst  those  with  no  special  powers  will  observe 
nothing.     Art  discerns  itself  best,  as  Wagner  said.     In  the 


no  SEX  AND  CHARACTER 

case  of  complex  personalities  the  matter  stands  thus  :  one 
of  these  can  understand  other  men  better  than  they  can 
understand  themselves,  because  within  himself  he  has  nol 
only  the  character  he  is  grasping,  but  also  its  opposite. 
Duality  is  necessary  for  observation  and  comprehension  ;/ii 
we -inquire  from  psychology  what  is  the  most  necessary 
condition  for  becoming  conscious  of  a  thing,  for  grasping 
it,  we  shall  find  the  answer  in  "  contrast."  If  everything 
were  a  uniform  grey  we  should  have  />^c  )de^  of  colour ; 
absolute  unison  of  sound  would  soon  j^  /Ue^p  in  all 
mankind  ;  duality,  the  power  which  can  differentiate,  is  the 
origin  of  the  alert  consciousness.  Thus  it  happens  that  no 
one  can  understand  himself  were  he  to  think  of  nothing 
else  all  his  life,  but  he  can  understand  another  to  whom  he 
is  partly  alike,  and  from  whom  he  is  also  partly  quite 
different.  Such  a  distribution  of  qualities  is  the  condition 
most  favourable  for  understanding.  In  short,  to  under- 
stand a  man  means  to  have  equal  parts  of  himself  and  of  his 
opposite  in  one. 

^hat  things  must  be  present  in  pairs  of  contrasts  if  we 
are  to  be  conscious  of  one  member  of  the  pair  is  shown  by 
the  facts  of  colour-vision.  Colour-blindness  always  extends 
to  the  complementary  colours.  Those  who  are  red  blind 
are  also  green  blind  ;  those  who  are  blind  to  blue  have  no 
consciousness  of  yellow.  This  law  holds  good  for  all 
mental  phenomena  ;  it  is  a  fundamental  condition  of  con- 
sciousness. The  most  high-spirited  people  understand  and 
experience  depression  much  more  than  those  who  are  of 
level  disposition.  Any  one  with  so  keen  a  sense  of  delicacy 
and  subtilty  as  Shakespeare  must  also  be  capable  of  ex- 
treme grossness^ 

The  more  types  and  their  contrasts  a  man  unites  in  his 
own  mind  the  less  will  escape  him,  since  observation  follows 
comprehension,  and  the  more  he  will  see  and  understand 
what  other  men  feel,  think,  and  wish.  There  has  never 
been  a  genius  who  was  not  a  great  discerner  of  men.  The 
great  man  sees  through  the  simpler  man  often  at  a  glance, 
and  would  be  able  to  characterise  him  completely. 


TALENT  AND  GENIUS  iii 

Most  men  have  this,  that,  or  the  other  faculty  or  sense 
disproportionately  developed.  One  man  knows  all  the  birds 
and  tells  their  different  voices  most  accurately.  Another 
has  a  love  for  plants  and  is  devoted  to  botany  from  his 
childhood.  One  man  pores  lovingly  into  the  many  layered 
rocks  of  the  earth,  and  has  only  the  vaguest  appreciation  of 
the  skies  ;  to  aaiother  the  attraction  of  cold,  star-sown 
space  is  supreme.  One  man  is  repelled  by  the  mountains 
and  seeks  the  restless  sea  ;  another,  like  Nietzsche,  gets  no 
help  from  the  tossing  waters  and  hungers  for  the  peace  of 
the  hills.  Every  man,  however  simple  he  may  be,  has  some 
side  of  nature  with  which  he  is  in  special  sympathy  and  for 
which  his  faculties  are  specially  alert.  And  so  the  ideal 
genius,  who  has  all  men  within  him,  has  also  all  their 
preferences  and  all  their  dislikes.  There  is  in  him  not  only 
the  universality  of  men,  but  of  all  nature.  He  is  the  man  to 
whom  all  things  tell  their  secrets,  to  whom  most  happens, 
and  whom  least  escapes.  He  understands  most  things,  and 
those  most  deeply,  because  he  has  the  greatest  number  of 
things  to  contrast  and  compare  them  with.  The  genius  is 
he  who  is  conscious  of  most,  and  of  that  most  acutely.  And 
so  without  doubt  his  sensations  must  be  most  acute  ;  but 
this  must  not  be  understood  as  implying,  say,  in  the  artist 
the  keenest  power  of  vision,  in  the  composer  the  most 
acute  hearing  ;  the  measure  of  genius  is  not  to  be  taken 
from  the  acuteness  of  the  sense  organ  but  from  that  of  the 
perceiving  brain. 

The  consciousness  of  the  genius  is,  then,  the  furthest 
removed  from  the  henid  stage.  It  has  the  greatest,  most 
limpid  clearness  and  distinctness.  In  this  way  genius 
declares  itself  to  be  a  kind  of  higher  masculinity,  and  thus 
the  female  cannot  be  possessed  of  genius.  The  conclusion 
of  this  chapter  and  the  last  is  simply  that  the  life  of  the 
male  is  a  more  highly  conscious  life  than  that  of  the  female, 
and  genius  is  identical  with  the  highest  and  widest  con- 
sciousness. This  extremely  comprehensive  consciousness 
of  the  highest  types  of  mankind  is  due  to  the  enormous 
number  of  contrasting  elements  in  their  natures. 


112  SEX  AND  CHARACTER 

Universality  is  the  distinguishing  mark  of  genius.  There 
is  no  such  thing  as  a  special  genius,  a  genius  for  mathe- 
matics, or  for  music,  or  even  for  chess,  but  only  a  universal 
genius.  The  genius  is  a  man  who  knows  everything  with- 
out having  learned  it. 

It  stands  to  reason  that  this  infinite  knowledge  does  not 
include  theories  and  systems  which  have  b^pn  formulated 
by  science  from  facts,  neither  the  history  of  the  Spanish 
war  of  succession  nor  experiments  in  dia-magnetism. 

The  artist  does  not  acquire  his  knowledge  of  the  colours 
reflected  on  water  by  cloudy  or  sunny  skies,  by  a  course  of 
optics,  any  more  than  it  requires  a  deep  study  of  character- 
ology  to  judge  other  men.  But  the  more  gifted  a  man  is, 
the  more  he  has  studied  on  his  own  account,  and  the  more 
subjects  he  has  made  his  own. 

The  theory  of  special  genius,  according  to  which  for 
instance,  it  is  supposed  that  a  musical  "  genius  "  should  be 
a  fool  at  other  subjects,  confuses  genius  with  talent.  A 
musician,  if  truly  great,  is  just  as  well  able  to  be  universal 
in  his  knowledge  as  a  philosopher  or  a  poet.  Such  an 
one  was  Beethoven.  On  the  other  hand,  a  musician  may 
be  as  limited  in  the  sphere  of  his  activity  as  any  average 
man  of  science.  Such  an  one  was  Johann  Strauss,  who, 
in  spite  of  his  beautiful  melodies,  cannot  be  regarded 
as  a  genius  if  only  because  of  the  absence  of  construc- 
tive faculty  in  him.  To  come  back  to  the  main  point ; 
there  are  many  kinds  of  talent,  but  only  one  kind  of  genius, 
and  that  is  able  to  choose  any  kind  of  talent  and  master  it. 
There  is  something  in  genius  common  to  all  those  who 
possess  it ;  however  much  difference  there  may  seem  to  be 
between  the  great  philosopher,  painter,  musician,  poet,  or 
religious  teacher.  The  particular  talent  through  the  medium 
of  which  the  spirit  of  a  man  develops  is  of  less  importance 
than  has  generally  been  thought.  The  limits  of  the 
different  arts  can  easily  be  passed,  and  much  besides  native 
inborn  gifts  have  to  be  taken  into  account.  The  history  of 
one  art  should  be  studied  along  with  the  history  of  other 
arts,  and  in  that  way  many  obscure  events  might  be  ex- 


TALENT  AND  GENIUS  113 

plained.  It  is  outside  my  present  purpose,  however,  to  go 
into  the  question  of  what  determines  a  genius  to  become, 
say^  a  mystic,  or,  say,  a  great  delineator. 

From  genius  itself,  the  common  quality  of  all  the  different 
manifestations  of  genius,  woman  is  debarred.  I  will  discuss 
later  as  to  whether  such  things  are  possible  as  pure  scientific 
or  technical  genius  as  well  as  artistic  and  philosophical 
genius.  There  is  good  reason  for  a  greater  exactness  in  the 
use  of  the  word.  But  that  may  come,  and  however  clearly 
we  may  yet  be  able  to  describe  it  woman  will  have  to  be 
excluded  from  it.  I  am  glad  that  the  course  of  my  inquiry 
has  been  such  as  to  make  it  impossible  for  me  to  be  charged 
with  having  framed  such  a  definition  of  genius  as  necessarily 
to  exclude  woman  from  it. 

I   may   now   sura   up   the   conclusions   of  this  chapter. 
Whilst  woman  has  no  consciousness  of  genius,  except  as 
manifested    in    one    particular    person,   who    imposes   his 
personality  on  her,  man  has  a  deep  capacity  for  realising  it, 
a  capacity  which  Carlyle,  in  his  still  little  understood  book    I 
on  "  Hero-Worship,"  has  described  so   fully   and   perma- 
nently.   In  "  Hero- Worship,"  moreover,  the  idea  is  definitely  I 
insisted  on    that   genius   is   linked  with    manhood,  that  it 
represents  an  ideal  masculinity  in  the  highest  form.    Woman 
has  no  direct  consciousness  of  it ;  she  borrows  a  kind  of         , 
imperfect  consciousness  from  man.     Woman,  in  short,  has  ^  x  / 
an  unconscious  life,  man  a  conscious  life,  and  the  genius  j 
the  most  conscious  life. 


^CHAPTER   V 


TALENT  AND  MEMORY 


The  following  observation  bears  on  my  henid  theory  : 

I  made  a  note,  half  mechanically,  of  a  page  in  a  botanical 
work  from  which  later  on  I  was  going  to  make  an  extract. 
Something  was  in  my  mind  in  henid  form.  What  I  thought, 
how  I  thought  it,  what  was  then  knocking  at  the  door  of  my 
consciousness,  I  could  not  remember  a  minute  afterwards, 
in  spite  of  the  hardest  effort.  I  take  this  case  as  a  typical 
example  of  the  henid. 

The  more  deeply  impressed,  the  more  detailed  a  complex 
perception  may  he  the  more  easily  does  it  reproduce  itself. 
Clearness  of  the  consciousness  is  the  preliminary  condition 
for  remembering,  and  the  memory  of  the  mental  stimulation 
is  proportional  to  the  intensity  of  the  consciousness.  "  I 
shall  not  forget  that "  ;  "  I  shall  remember  that  all  my  life  "  ; 
"That  will  never  escape  my  memory  again."  Such  phrases 
men  use  when  things  have  made  a  deep  impression  on 
them,  of  moments  in  which  they  have  gained  wisdom  or 
have  become  richer  by  an  important  experience.  As  the 
power  of  being  reproduced  is  directly  proportionate  to  the 
organisation  of  a  mental  impression,  it  is  clear  that  there 
can  be  no  recollection  of  an  absolute  henid. 

As  the  mental  endowment  of  a  man  varies  with  the 
organisation  of  his  accumulated  experiences,  the  better 
endowed  he  is,  the  more  readily  will  he  be  able  to  remember 
his  whole  past,  everything  that  he  has  ever  thought  or  heard, 
seen  or  done,  perceived  or  felt,  the  more  completely  in  fact 
will  he  be  able  to  reproduce  his  whole  life.  Universal 
remembrance  of  all  its  experiences,  therefore,  is  the  surest, 


TALENT  AND  MEMORY  115 

most  general,  and  most  easily  proved  mark  of  a  genius.  If 
a  common  theory,  especially  popular  with  the  philosophers 
of  the  coffee-house,  be  true,  that  productive  men  (because 
they  are  alway  scovering  new  ground)  have  no  memory,  it 
is  often  because  they  are  productive  only  from  being  on 
new  ground. 

The  great  extent  and  acuteness  of  the  memory  of  men  of 
genius,  which  I  propose  to  lay  down  dogmatically  as  a 
necessary  inference  from  my  theory,  without  attempting  to 
prove  it  further,  is  not  incompatible  with  their  rapid  loss  of 
the  facts  impressed  on  them  in  school,  the  tables  of  Greek 
verbs,  and  so  forth.  Their  memory  is  of  what  they  have 
experienced,  not  of  what  they  have  learned.  Of  all  that 
was  acquired  for  examination  purposes  only  so  much  will 
be  retained  as  was  in  harmony  with  the  natural  talent  of 
the  pupil.  Thus  a  house-painter  may  have  a  better  memory 
for  colours  than  a  great  philosopher  ;  the  most  narrow 
philologist  may  remember  Greek  aorists  that  he  has  learned 
by  heart  better  than  his  teacher,  who  may  none  the  less  be 
a  great  poet.  The  uselessness  of  the  experimental  school  of 
psychology  (notwithstanding  their  marvellous  arsenal  of 
instruments  of  experimental  precision)  is  shown  by  their 
expectation  of  getting  results  as  to  memory  from  tests  with 
letters,  unconnected  words,  long  rows  of  figures.  ^ These 
experiments  have  so  little  bearing  on  the  true  memory  of 
man,  on  the  memory  by  which  he  recalls  the  experiences  of 
his  life,  that  one  wonders  if  such  psychologists  have  realised 
that  such  a  thing  as  the  mind  exists,'  The  customary 
experiments  place  the  most  different  subjects  under  the 
same  conditions,  pay  no  attention  to  the  individuality  of 
these  subjects,  and  treat  them  merely  as  good  or  bad 
registering  apparatus.  There  is  a  parable  in  the  fact  that 
the  two  German  words  ''bemerken"  (take  notice  of) 
and  "  merken "  (remember)  come  from  the  same  root. 
Only  what  is  harmonious  with  some  inborn  quality  will  be 
retained.  When  a  man  remembers  a  thing,  it  is  because  he 
was  capable  of  taking  some  interest  in  the  thing  ;  when  he 
forgets,  it  is  because  he  was   uninterested.     The  religious 


Ti6  SEX  AND  CHARACTER 

man  will  surely  and  exactly  remember  texts,  the  poet  verses, 
and  the  mathematician  equations. 

This  brings  us  in  another  fashion  to  the  subject  of  the 
last  chapter,  and  to  another  reason  for  the  great  memories 
of  genius.  The  more  significant  a  man  is,  the  more  different 
personalities  he  unites  in  himself,  the  more  interests  that 
are  contained  in  him,  the  more  wide  his  memory  must  be. 
All  men  have  practically  the  same  opportunities  of  per- 
ception, but  the  vast  majority  of  men  apprehend  only  an 
infinitesimal  part  of  what  they  have  perceived.  The  ideal 
genius  is  one  in  whom  perception  and  apprehension  are 
identical  in  their  field.  Of  course  no  such  being  actually 
exists.  On  the  other  hand,  there  is  no  man  who  has  ap- 
prehended nothing  that  he  has  perceived.  In  this  way  we 
may  take  it  that  all  degrees  of  genius  (not  talent)  exist ;  no 
male  is  quite  without  a  trace  of  genius.  Complete  genius 
is  an  ideal ;  no  man  is  absolutely  without  the  quality,  and 
no  man  possesses  it  completely.  Apprehension  or  absorp- 
tion, and  memory  or  retention,  vary  together  in  their  extent 
and  their  permanence.  There  is  an  uninterrupted  gradation 
from  the  man  whose  mentality  is  unconnected  from  moment 
to  moment,  and  to  whom  no  incidents  can  signify  anything 
because  there  is  within  him  nothing  to  compare  them  with 
(such  an  extreme,  of  course,  does  not  exist)  to  the  fully 
developed  minds  for  which  everything  is  unforgettable, 
because  of  the  firm  impressions  made  and  the  sureness  with 
which  they  are  absorbed.  The  extreme  of  genius  also  does 
not  exist,  because  even  the  greatest  genius  is  not  wholly  a 
genius  at  every  moment  of  his  life. 

What  is  at  once  a  deduction  from  the  necessary  connec- 
tion between  memory  and  genius,  and  a  proof  of  the 
actuality  of  the  connection,  lies  in  the  extraordinary 
memory  for  minute  details  shown  by  the  man  of  genius. 
Because  of  the  universality  of  his  mind,  everything  has 
only  one  interpretation  for  him,  an  interpretation  often 
unsuspected  at  the  time  ;  and  so  things  cling  obstinately 
in  his  memory  and  remain  there  inextinguishably,  although 
he  may  have  taken  not  the  smallest  trouble  to  take  note  of 


them.'  f'AFidj so  XDn&;  may  almost  take  as  anothjern'mafk  Q^aä^fti 
genius  that;  thc:  phrase,. "this  is  no  {ongQvtnifJu-b^^jin^i 
meaning  for  him.  i..:Xhefe  is  .nothing  itha^üi^I  no.rk(ng€C(|:r/Ufö 
for  him,  probably  just  because  he  hasj^a,cte2^6riici83itfe.ali»^ 
other  men  of  the  changes  that  come  witbitimet*  c  v/J  sdi  boß 

The  following  appears  to^he;t)neiofi(th^,[jbestifmiaii[§  jferfl 
the  objective  examination  of  the  endowment  i3f;:a^-naa5i)ä)  Ik 
after  a  long  separation  from  him  we  resume  the  new  initeBf) 
course  with  the  circumstances  of  the  last,  then  we  shall 
find  that  the  highly  endowed  man  has  forgotten  nothing, 
that  he  vividly  and  completely  takes  up  the  subject  from 
where  it  was  left  off  with  the  fullest  recollection  of  the 
details.  How  much  ordinary  men  forget  of  their  lives 
any  one  can  prove  to  his  astonishment  and  horror.  It  may 
happen  that  we  have  been  for  hours  importantly  engaged 
with  a  man  a  few  weeks  before,  and  we  may  find  that  he 
has  forgotten  all  about  it.  It  is  true  that  if  one  recalls  all 
the  circumstances  to  his  mind,  he  begins  to  remember,  and, 
finally,  with  sufficient  help,  may  remember  almost  com- 
pletely. Such  experience  has  made  me  think  that  there 
may  be  an  empirical  proof  of  the  hypothesis  that  no  abso- 
lute forgetting  ever  occurs  ;  that  if  the  right  method  with 
the  individual  be  chosen  recollection  may  always  be 
induced. 

It  follows  also  that  from  one's  own  experience,  from 
what  one  has  thought  or  said,  heard  or  read,  felt  or  done, 
one  can  give  the  smallest  possible  to  another,  that  the  other 
does  not  already  know.  Consideration  of  the  amount  that 
a  man  can  take  in  from  another  would  seem  to  serve  as  a 
sort  of  objective  measure  of  his  genius,  a  measure  that 
does  not  have  to  wait  for  an  estimation  of  his  actual 
creative  efforts.  I  am  not  going  to  discuss  the  extent  to 
which  this  theory  opposes  current  views  on  education,  but 
I  recommend  parents  and  teachers  to  pay  attention  to  it. 
The  extent  to  which  a  man  can  detect  differences  and 
resemblances  must  depend  on  his  memories.  This  faculty 
'yill  be  best  developed  in  those  whose  past  permeates  their 
present,  all  the  moments  of  the  life  of  whom  are  amalga- 


ir8  SEX  AND  CHARACTER 

mated.  Such  persons  will  have  the  greatest  opportunities 
of  detecting  resemblances  and  so  finding  the  material  for 
comparisons.  They  will  always  seize  hold  of  from  the  past 
what  has  the  greatest  resemblance  to  the  present  experience, 
and  the  two  experiences  will  be  combined  in  such  a  way 
that  no  similarities  or  differences  will  be  concealed.  And 
so  they  are  able  to  maintain  the  past  against  the  influence 
of  the  present.  It  is  not  without  reason  that  from  time 
immemorial  the  special  merit  of  poetry  has  been  considered 
to  be  its  richness  in  beautiful  comparisons  and  pictures,  or 
that  we  turn  to  again  and  again,  or  await  our  favourite 
images  with  impatience  when  we  read  Homer  or  Shake- 
speare or  Kloppstock.  <To-day  when,  for  the  first  time  for 
a  century  and  a  half,  Germany  is  without  great  poets  or 
painters,  and  when  none  the  less  it  is  impossible  to  find 
any  one  who  is  not  an  "  author,"  the  power  of  clear  and 
beautiful  comparison  seems  to  have  gone..  A  period  the 
nature  of  which  can  best  be  described  in  vague  and  dubious 
words,  the  philosophy  of  which  has  become  in  more  than 
one  sense  the  philosophy  ot  the  unconscious  can  contain 
nothing  great.  ■(Consciousness  is  the  mark  of  greatness,) and 
befoie  it  the  unconscious  is  dispersed  as  the  sun  disperses 
a  mist.  If  only  consciousness  were  to  come  to  this  age, 
how  quickly  voices  that  are  now  famous  would  become 
silent.  It  is  only  in  full  consciousness,  in  which  the 
experience  of  the  present  assumes  greater  intensity  by  its 
union  with  all  the  experiences  of  the  past,  that  imagination, 
the  necessary  quality  tor  all  philosophical  as  for  all  artistic 
effort,  can  find  a  place.  It  is  untrue,  therefore,  that  women 
have  more  imagination  than  men.  The  experiences  on 
account  of  which  men  have  assigned  higher  powers  of 
imagination  to  women  come  entirely  from  the  imaginative 
sexual  life  of  women.  The  only  inferences  that  can  be 
drawn  from  this  do  not  belong  to  the  present  section  of  my 
work. 

\rhe  absence  of  women  from  the  history  of  music  must 
be  referred  to  deeper  causes  ;  but  it  also  supports  my  con- 
tention that  women  are  devoid  of  imagination.     To  produce 


TALENT  AND  MEMORY  119 

music  requires  a  great  deal  more  imagination  than  the 
malest  woman  possesses,  and  much  more  than  is  required 
for  other  kinds  of  artistic  or  for  scientific  effort.  ^There 
is  nothing  in  nature,  nothing  in  the  sphere  of  the  senses, 
corresponding  directly  with  sound  pictures.  Music  has  no 
relation  to  the  world  of  experience  ;  there  is  no  "  music." 
no  chords  or  melodies  in  the  natural  world  ;  these  have  to 
be  evolved  from  the  imagination  of  the  composer.  Every 
other  art  has  more  definite  relations  to  empirical  art.  Even 
architecture,  which  has  been  compared  with  music,  has 
definite  relations  to  matter,  although,  like  music,  it  has  no 
anticipations  in  the  senses.  Architecture,  too,  is  an  entirely 
masculine  occupation.  The  very  idea  of  a  female  architect 
excites  compassion.*) 

The  so-called  stupefying  effect  of  music  on  the  creative 
or  practical  musician  (especially  instrumental  music) 
depends  on  the  fact  that  even  the  sense  of  smell  is  a 
better  guide  to  man  in  the  world  of  experience  than  the 
contents  of  a  musical  work.  And  it  is  just  this  complete 
absence  of  all  relation  to  the  world  of  sight,  taste,  and  smell, 
that  makes  music  specially  unfitted  to  express  the  female 
nature.  It  also  explains  why  this  peculiarity  of  his  art 
demands  the  highest  grade  of  imagination  from  a  musician, 
and  why  those  to  whom  musical  compositions  "  come  " 
seem  stranger  to  their  fellow  men  than  painters  or  sculptors. 
The  so-called  "  imagination "  of  women  must  be  very 
different  from  that  of  men,  since  there  is  no  woman  with 
even  the  same  position  in  the  history  of  music  that  Angelica 
Kaufmann  had  in  art. 

Where  anything  obviously  depends  on  strong  moulding 
women  have  not  the  smallest  leaning  towards  its  production, 
neither  in  philosophy  nor  in  music,  in  the  plastic  arts  nor  in 
architecture.  Where,  however,  a  weak  and  vague  senti- 
mentality can  be  expressed  with  little  effort,  as  in  painting 
or  verse-making,  or  in  pseudo-mysticism  and  theosophy, 
women  have  sought  and  found  a  suitable  field  for  their 
efforts.  Their  lack  of  productiveness  in  the  former  sphere 
is  in  harmony  with  the  vagueness  of  the  psychical  life  of 


I20  SEX  AND  CHARACTER 

women.  Music  is  the  nearest  possible  approach  to  the 
organisation  of  a  sensation.  Nothing  is  more  definite, 
characteristic,  and  impressive  than  a  melody,  nothing  that 
will  more  strongly  resist  obliteration.  One  remembers 
much  longer  what  is  sung  than  what  is  spoken,  and  the  arias 
belter  than  the  recitatives. 

Let  us  note  specially  here  that  the  usual  phrases  of  the 
defenders  of  women  do  not  apply  to  the  case  of  women. 
Music  is  not  one  of  the  arts  to  which  women  have  had 
access  only  so  recently  that  it  is  too  soon  to  expect  fruits  ; 
from  the  remotest  antiquity  women  have  sung  and  played. 
And  yet     .     .     . 

It  is  to  be  remembered  that  even  in  the  case  of  drawing 
and  painting  women  have  now  had  opportunities  for  at 
least  two  centuries.  Every  one  knows  how  many  girls  learn 
to  draw  and  sketch,  and  it  cannot  be  said  that  there  has  not 
yet  been  time  for  results  were  results  possible.  As  there  are 
so  few  female  painters  with  the  smallest  importance  in  the 
history  of  art,  it  must  be  that  there  is  something  in  the 
nature  of  things  against  it.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  painting 
and  etching  of  women  is  no  more  than  a  sort  of  elegant, 
luxurious  handiwork.  The  sensuous,  physical  element  of 
colour  is  more  suitable  for  them  than  the  intellectual  work 
of  formal  line-drawing,  and  hence  it  is,  that  whereas  women 
have  acquired  some  small  distinction  in  painting  they  have 
gained  none  in  drawing.  ^The  power  of  giving  form  to 
chaos  is  with  those  in  whom  the  most  universal  memory 
has  made  the  widest  comprehension  possible  ;  it  is  a  quality 
of  the  masculine  genius./ 

I  regret  that  I  must  so  continually  use  the  word  genius,  as 
if  that  should  apply  only  to  a  caste  as  well  defined  from  those 
below  as  income-tax  payers  are  from  the  untaxed.  The  word 
genius  was  very  probably  invented  by  a  man  who  had  small 
claims  on  it  himself ;  greater  men  would  have  understood 
better  what  to  be  a  genius  really  was,  and  probably  they 
would  have  come  to  see  that  the  word  could  be  applied  to 
most  people.  Goethe  said  that  perhaps  only  a  genius  is  able 
to  understand  a  genius. 


TALENT  AND  MEMORY  121 

VThere  are  probably  very  few  people  who  have  not  at  some 
time  of  their  lives  had  some  quality  of  genius.  If  they  have 
not  had  such,  it  is  probable  that  they  have  also  been  without 
great  sorrow  or  great  pain^  They  would  have  needed  only 
to  live  sufficiently  intently  for  a  time  for  some  quality  to 
reveal  itself.  The  poems  of  first  love  are  a  case  in  point, 
and  certainly  such  love  is  a  sufficient  stimulus. 

It  must  not  be  forgotten  that  quite  ordinary  men  in 
moments  of  excitement,  in  anger  at  some  underhanded  deed, 
have  found  words  with  which  they  never  would  have  been 
credited.  sThe  greater  part  of  what  is  called  expression  in 
art  as  in  language  depends  (if  the  reader  will  remember  what 
I  have  said  about  the  process  of  "  clarification  ")  on  the  fact 
that  some  individual  more  richly  endowed  clarifies,  organises, 
and  exhibits  some  idea  almost  instantaneouly,  an  idea  which 
to  a  less  endowed  person  was  still  in  the  henid  form.  The 
course  of  clarification  is  much  shortened  in  the  mind  of  the 
second  person.) 

If  it  really  were  the  case,  as  popular  opinion  has  tried  to 
establish,  that  the  genius  were  separated  from  ordinary  men 
by  a  thick  wall  through  which  no  sound  could  penetrate, 
then  all  understanding  of  the  efforts  of  genius  would  be 
denied  to  ordinary  men,  and  their  works  would  fail  to  make 
any  impression  on  them.  All  hopes  of  progress  depend  on 
this  being  untrue.  And  it  is  untrue.  <^he  difference  be- 
tween men  of  genius  and  the  others  is  quantitative  not 
qualitative,  of  degree  not  of  kind. 

There  is,  moreover,  very  little  sense  in  preventing  young 
people  from  giving  expression  to  their  ideas  on  the  pretext 
that  they  have  less  experience  than  have  older  persons. 
There  are  many  who  may  live  a  thousand  years  without 
encountering  experience  of  any  value.  It  could  only  be  in 
a  society  of  persons  equally  gifted  that  such  an  idea  could 
have  any  meaning./ 

Because  the  life  of  the  genius  is  more  intense  even  in  his 
earliest  years  than  that  of  other  children,  his  memory  can 
go  further  back.  In  extreme  cases  the  memory  may  be 
cor  iplete  and  vivid  back  to  the  third  year  of  life,  whereas 


122  SEX  AND  CHARACTER 

in  most  recollection  begins  much  later.  I  know  some 
people  whose  earliest  recollections  date  only  from  their 
eighth  year,  and  there  are  instances  of  an  even  later  begin- 
ning of  the  conscious  life.  I  do  not  maintam  that  the  date 
at  which  active  memory  begins  can  be  taken  as  a  measure  of 
relative  genius,  that  he  who  remembers  from  his  second 
year  is  so  much  the  more  of  a  genius  than  he  who  can  go 
back  only  to  his  fourth  or  fifth  year.  But  in  a  general  way, 
I  believe  the  parallel  to  hold  good. 

Even  in  the  cases  of  the  greatest  men,  some  time,  greater 
or  shorter,  elapsed  between  the  date  of  their  earliest  recol- 
lection and  the  time  from  which  onwards  they  remember 
everything,  from  the  time,  in  fact,  in  which  their  genius  was 
ripe.  But  in  the  case  of  most  men  there  is  forgetfulness  of 
the  greater  part  of  their  lives  ;  they  are  conscious  only  that 
they  themselves  and  none  other  have  lived  their  lives.  Out 
of  their  whole  lives  there  only  remain  certain  moments,  and 
scattered  recollections,  which  serve  as  sign-posts.  If  they  are 
asked  about  any  particular  thing  they  can  only  tell,  for  in- 
stance, because  in  such  and  such  a  month  they  were  so  old, 
or  they  wore  such  and  such  clothes,  they  lived  at  this  place, 
or  that  their  income  was  so  much. 

If  one  has  lived  with  them  in  former  years,  it  is  only  after 
great  trouble  that  the  past  can  be  brought  to  their  mind. 
In  such  cases  one  is  surely  justified  in  saying  that  such  a 
person  is  ungifted,  or  at  least  in  not  considering  him  con- 
spicuously able. 

The  request  for  an  autobiography  would  put  most  men 
into  a  most  painful  position  ;  they  could  scarcely  tell  if  they 
were  asked  what  they  had  done  the  day  before.  Memory 
with  most  people  is  quite  spasmodic  and  purely  associative. 
In  the  case  of  the  man  of  genius  every  impression  that  he  has 
received  endures  ;  he  is  always  under  the  influence  of 
impressions  ;  and  so  nearly  all  men  of  genius  tend  to  suffer 
from  fixed  ideas.  The  psychical  condition  of  men's  minds 
may  be  compared  with  a  set  of  bells  close  together,  and  so 
arranged  that  in  the  ordinary  man  a  bell  rings  only  when 
one  beside  it  sounds,  and  the  vibration  lasts  only  a  moment. 


TALENT  AND  MEMORY  123 

In  the  genius,  when  a  bell  sounds  it  vibrates  so  strongly 
that  it  sets  in  action  the  whole  series,  and  remains  in  action 
throughout  life.  The  latter  kind  of  movement  often  gives 
rise  to  extraordinary  conditions  and  absurd  impulses,  that 
may  last  for  weeks  together  and  that  form  the  basis  of  the 
supposed  kinship  of  genius  with  insanity. 

For  similar  reasons  gratitude  is  apparently  the  rarest 
human  virtue.  People  are  often  very  conscious  of  how  much 
they  have  borrowed,  but  they  neither  can  nor  will  try  to 
remember  the  necessity  in  which  they  stood,  nor  the  free- 
dom which  that  help  brought  them.  Even  if  want  of 
memory  were  really  the  cause  of  ingratitude,  it  would  not 
be  sufficient  for  a  man  to  possess  a  marvellous  memory  to 
have  a  like  spirit  of  gratitude.  A  special  condition  is  also 
necessary,  but  its  description  cannot  be  undertaken  here. 

From  the  connection  between  giftedness  and  memory, 
which  is  so  often  mistaken  and  denied  because  it  is  not 
sought  where  it  is  to  be  found,  from  the  power  of  self  recol- 
lection, a  further  fact  is  to  be  deduced.  The  poet  who  feels 
urged  to  write  without  premeditation,  without  reflection, 
without  having  willingly  pressed  the  pedal ;  the  musician  to 
whom  the  desire  to  compose  has  come,  so  that  he  must 
create  whether  he  will  or  no,  even  if  he  feels  more  inclined 
to  sleep  or  to  rest  ;  tnese,  in  such  moments,  will  simply 
reproduce  thoughts  they  have  carried  in  their  heads  all  their 
lives.  A  composer  wno  can  remember  none  of  his  songs  or 
subjects  by  heart,  or  a  poet  who  cannot  recollect  any  of  his 
poems — without  having  carefully  learned  them — such  men 
are  in  no  sense  really  great. 

Before  we  apply  these  remarks  to  the  consideration  of  the 
mental  differences  of  the  sexes,  we  must  make  yet  one 
more  distinction  between  different  kinds  of  memory.  The 
individual  moments  in  the  life  of  a  gifted  man  are  not 
remembered  as  disconnected  points,  not  as  different 
particles  of  time,  each  one  separated  and  defined  from  the 
following  one,  as  the  numerals  one,  two,  and  so  on. 

The  result  of  self-observation  shows  that  sleep,  the 
limitations   of   consciousness,   the   gaps   in  memory,  even 


124  SEX  AND  CHARACTER 

special  experiences,  appear  to  be  in  some  mysterious  way 
one  great  whole  ;  incidents  do  not  follow  each  other  like 
the  tickings  of  a  watch,  but  they  pass  along  in  a  single 
unbroken  stream.  With  ordinary  men  the  moments  which 
are  united  in  a  close  continuity  out  of  the  original  discrete 
multiplicity  are  very  few,  and  the  course  of  their  lives 
resembles  a  little  brook,  whereas  with  the  genius  it  is  more 
like  a  mighty  river  into  which  all  the  little  rivulets  flow  from 
afar ;  that  is  to  say,  the  universal  comprehension  of  genius 
vibrates  to  no  experience  in  which  all  the  individual 
moments  have  not  been  gathered  up  and  stored. 
^This  peculiar  contmuity  by  which  a  man  first  realises  that 
he  exists,  that  he  is,  and  that  he  is  in  the  world,  is  all 
comprehensive  in  the  genius,  limited  to  a  few  important 
moments  in  the  mediocre,  and  altogether  lacking  in  woman?) 
When  a  woman  looks  back  over  her  life  and  lives  again  her 
experiences,  there  is  presented  no  continuous,  unbroken 
stream,  but  only  a  few  scattered  points.  And  what  kind  of 
points  ?  They  are  just  those  which  accord  with  woman's 
natural  instincts.  Of  what  these  interests  exclusively  consist 
the  second  chapter  gave  a  preliminary  idea  ;  and  those  who 
remember  the  ideas  in  question  will  not  be  astonished  at  the 
following  facts  :  The  female  is  concerned  altogether  with 
one  class  of  recollections — those  connected  with  the  sexual 
impulse  and  reproduction.  She  thinks  of  her  lovers  and 
proposals,  of  her  marriage  day,  of  every  child  as  if  it  were 
a  doll  ;  of  the  flowers  which  she  received  at  every  ball, 
the  number,  size,  and  price  of  the  bouquets ;  of  every 
serenade  ;  of  every  verse  which  (as  she  fondly  imagines)  was 
written  for  her  ;  of  every  phrase  by  which  a  lover  has  im- 
pressed her ;  but  above  all — with  an  exactness  which  is  as 
contemptible  as  it  is  disquieting  to  herself — of  every 
compliment  without  exception  that  has  ever  been  paid  her. 

That  is  all  that  the  real  woman  recalls  of  her  life.  But 
it  is  just  those  things  which  human  beings  never  forget,  and 
those  they  cannot  remember  that  give  the  clue  to  knowledge 
of  their  life  and  character.  It  belongs  to  a  later  period  of 
the  book  to  go  more  thoroughly  into  the  reason  why  the 


TALENT  AND  MEMORY  125 

female  has  precisely  the  remembrances  she  has.  Some 
important  conclusion  may  be  expected  from  reflection  on 
the  incredible  memory  with  which  women  recall  all  the 
adulation  and  flattery,  all  the  proofs  of  gallantry,  which 
have  happened  to  them  since  childhood. 

Whatever  may  be  urged  against  the  present  complete 
limitation  of  the  female  memory  to  the  sphere  of  sexuality 
and  conjugal  life,  it  is  to  me  quite  evident.  Various 
arguments  about  girls'  schools,  and  so  forth,  I  am  prepared 
for.  These  difficulties  will  have  to  be  cleared  away  later. 
But  I  must  just  say  again  that  all  memory,  which  is  to  be 
used  as  a  means  of  psychological  definition  of  the  individual, 
can  include  only  the  memory  of  what  has  been  learnt  when 
learning  means  actual  experience. 

The  explanation  of  the  discontinuity  in  the  psychical  life 
of  women  (reference  to  which  is  introduced  here,  only 
because  it  is  a  necessary  psychological  factor  in  the  problem 
of  memory,  and  without  reference  to  its  spiritualistic  or 
idealistic  significance)  can  be  reached  only  when  the  nature 
of  continuity  is  studied  with  reference  to  the  deepest 
problems  of  philosophy  and  psychology. 

As  a  proof  of  the  fact  I  will  at  present  quote  nothing  more 
than  the  statement  of  Lotze,  which  has  so  often  caused 
astonishment,  that  women  much  more  readily  submit  them- 
selves to  new  relationships  and  more  easily  accommodate 
themselves  to  them  than  men,  in  whom  the  parvenu  can  be 
seen  much  longer,  whereas  one  might  not  be  able  to  tell  the 
peasant  from  the  peeress,  the  woman  brought  up  in  poor 
surroundings  from  the  patrician's  daughter.  Later  on  I 
shall  deal  more  exhaustively  with  this  subject. 

At  any  rate,  it  will  now  be  seen  why  (if  neither  vanity, 
desire  for  gossip,  nor  imitation  drives  them  to  it)  only  the 
better  men  write  down  recollections  of  their  lives,  and  how 
I  perceive  in  this  a  strong  evidence  of  the  connection 
between  memory  and  giftedness.  It  is  not  as  if  every  man 
of  genius  wished  to  write  an  autobiography  :  the  incitement 
to  autobiography  comes  from  special,  very  deep-seated 
psychological   conditions.     But    on   the    other    hand,   the 


126  SEX  AND  CHARACTER 

writing  of  a  full  autobiography,  if  it  is  the  oi.tcome  of  a 
genuine  desire,  is  always  the  sign  of  a  superior  man.  For 
real  faithful  memory  is  the  source  of  reverence.  The  really 
great  would  resist  any  temptation  to  give  up  his  past  in 
exchange  for  material  advantage  or  mental  health ;  the 
greatest  treasures  of  the  world,  even  happiness  itself,  he 
would  not  take  in  exchange  for  his  memories. 

^he  desire  for  a  draught  of  the  waters  of  Lethe  is  the 
trait  of  mediocre  or  inferior  natures.  And  however  much  a 
really  great  man,  as  Goethe  says,  may  condemn  and  abhor 
his  past  failings,  and  although  he  sees  others  clinging  fast  to 
theirs,  he  will  never  smile  at  those  past  actions  and  failings 
of  his  own,  or  make  merry  over  his  early  mode  of  life  and 
thoughty^ 

The  class  of  persons,  now  so  much  in  evidence,  who 
claim  to  have  "  conquered  "  their  pasts,  have  the  smallest 
possible  claim  to  the  word  "  conquer."  They  are  those  who 
idly  relate  that  they  formerly  believed  this  or  the  other,  but 
have  now  "  overcome "  their  beliefs,  whereas  they  are  as 
little  in  earnest  about  the  present  as  they  were  about  the 
past.  They  see  only  the  mechanism,  not  the  soul  of  things, 
and  at  no  stage  what  they  believe  themselves  to  have 
conquered  was  deep  in  their  natures. 

4n  contrast  with  these  it  may  be  noticed  with  what  painful 
care  great  men  render  even  the,  apparently,  most  minute 
details  in  their  own  biographies  tjffor  them  the  past  and 
present  are  equal ;  with  others  neither  of  the  two  are  real/ 

The  famous  man  realises  how  everything,  even  the 
smallest,  most  secondary,  matters  played  an  important  part 
in  his  life,  how  they  have  helped  his  development,  and  to  this 
fact  is  due  his  extraordinary  reverence  for  his  own  memoirs. 
And  such  an  autobiography  is  not  written  all  at  once,  as  it 
were,  with  one  event  treated  like  another,  and  without 
meditatio  ,  ;  nor  does  the  idea  of  it  suddenly  occur  to  a 
mnn  ;  the  material  for  such  a  work  by  a  great  man,  so  to 
speak,  is  always  at  hand. 

<^is  new  experiences  acquire  a  deeper  significance  because 
of  the  past,  which  is  always  present  to  him,  and  hence  the 


TALENT  AND  MEMORY  127 

great  man,  and  only  the  great  man,  feels  that  he  himself  is  in 
very  truth  a  "  man  of  destiny.  /  And  so  it  comes  that  great 
men  are  always  more  "  superstitious "  than  average  men. 
To  sum  up,  I  may  say  : 

Y^  man  is  himself  important  precisely  in  proportion  that 
all  things  seem  important  to  him./ 

In  the  course  of  further  investigation  this  dictum  will  be 
seen  to  have  a  deep  significance  even  apart  from  its  bearing 
on  theuniversality,  comprehension,  and  comparison  exhibited 
by  the  genius. 

The  position  of  woman  in  these  matters  is  not  difficult  to 
explain.  A  real  woman  never  becomes  conscious  of  a  des- 
tiny, of  her  own  destiny  ;  she  is  not  heroic  ;  she  fights  most 
for  her  possessions,  and  there  is  nothing  tragic  in  the  struggle 
as  her  own  fate  is  decided  with  the  fate  of  her  possessions, 
/inasmuch  as  woman  is  without  continuity,  she  can  have 
no  true  reverence  ;  as  a  fact,  reverence  is  a  purely  male 
virtue.  A  man  is  first  reverent  about  himself,  and  self- 
respect  is  the  first  stage  in  reverence  for  all  things^  But  it 
costs  a  woman  very  little  to  break  off  with  her  past ;  if  the 
word  irony  could  be  fittingly  used  here,  one  might  say  that 
a  man  does  not  easily  regard  his  past  with  irony  and 
superiority  as  women  appear  to  do — and  not  only  after 
marriage. 

Later  on  I  shall  show  how  women  are  exactly  the  opposite 
of  that  which  reverence  means.  I  would  rather  be  silent 
about  the  reverence  of  widows. 

The  superstition  of  women  is  psychologically  absolutely 
different  from  the  superstitions  of  famous  men. 

The  reverent  relation  to  one's  own  past,  which  depends 
on  a  real  continuity  of  memory,  and  which  is  possible  only 
by  comprehension,  can  be  shown  in  relation  to  a  still  wider 
and  deeper  subject. 

Whether  a  man  has  a  real  relationship  to  his  own  past  or 
not,  involves  the  question  as  to  whether  he  has  a  desire  for 
immortality,  or  if  the  idea  of  death  is  indifferent  to  him. 

The  desire  for  immortality  is  to-day,  as  a  rule,  treated 
shamefully,  and  in  a  very  different  spirit^ 


^28  SEX  AND  CHARACTER 

Not  only  is  the  problem  treated  as  merely  ontological,  but 
/  the  psychological  side  of  it  is  only  trifled  with.  It  has  been 
held  that  it  is  connected,  like  the  doctrine  of  the  trans- 
migration of  souls,  with  the  feeling  that  we  have  all  experi- 
enced, when,  in  doing  something  certainly  for  the  first  time, 
we  seem  to  remember  having  gone  through  the  same 
experience  before.  Another  generally  adopted  view  is  to 
derive  the  idea  of  immortality  from  the  belief  in  spirits,  as 
has  been  done  by  Tylor,  Spencer,  Avenarius,  and  others, 
although  in  any  other  age  than  this  age  of  experimental 
psychology  it  would  have  been  dismissed  a  priori.  (  I  am 
sure  that  it  must  seem  impossible  to  the  majority  of 
thinking  men  to  regard  a  belief  so  important  to  man- 
kind, about  which  there  has  been  so  much  strife,  as  merely 
the  last  stage  in  a  syllogism  of  which  the  first  premiss 
is  the  midnight  dream  of  a  dead  man.  How  can  phe- 
nomena of  that  kind  explain  the  belief  in  the  continuity  of 
their  lives  after  death  held  so  firmly  by  Goethe  or  Bach,  or 
the  desire  for  immortality  which  speaks  to  us  in  Beethoven's 
last  sonatas  ?  The  desire  for  the  persistence  of  the  con- 
scious seit  must  spring  from  sources  mightier  than  these 
feeble  rationalistic  guesses^ 
\The  deeper  source  of  the  belief  depends  on  the  relation  of 
J  a  man  to  his  own  past.  Our  consciousness  and  vision  of  the 
past  is  the  strongest  ground  for  our  desire  to  be  conscious 
in  the  future.  The  man  who  values  his  past,  who  holds  his 
mental  life  in  greater  respect  than  his  corporeal  life,  is  not 
willing  to  give  up  his  consciousness  at  death.  And  so  this 
organic  primary  desire  for  immortality  is  strongest  in  men 
of  genius,  in  the  men  whose  pasts  are  richest.  This  con- 
nection between  the  desire  for  immortality  and  memory 
receives  strong  support  from  what  is  related  by  those  who 
have  been  rescued  from  sudden  death.  >  Even  if  they  had 
not  thought  it  out  before  they  relive  their  past  in  a  few 
moments,  at  once  and  with  frantic  rapidity.  The  feeling  of 
what  is  impending  brings  in  violent  contrast  the  intensity  of 
the  present  consciousness  and  the  idea  that  it  may  cease  for 
ever.     In  reality  we  know  very  little  of  the  mental  state  of 


TALENT  AND  MEMORY  129 

the  dying.  It  takes  more  than  an  ordinary  person  to  inter- 
pret it,  and  for  reasons  connected  with  what  I  have  been 
saying  men  of  genius  usually  avoid  death-beds.  But  it  is 
quite  wrong  to  ascribe  the  sudden  appearance  of  religion  in 
so  many  people  who  are  fatally  ill,  to  a  desire  to  make  sure 
of  their  future  state.  It  is  extremely  superficial  to  assume 
that  the  doctrine  of  hell  can  for  the  first  time  assume  such 
an  importance  to  the  dying  as  to  make  them  afraid  to  pass 
away  "with  a  lie  on  their  lips."* 

The  important  point  is  this  :  Why  do  men  who  have 
lived  throughout  a  lying  life  feel  towards  the  end  a 
sudden  desire  for  truth  ?  And  why  are  others  so  horrified, 
although  they  do  not  believe  in  punishment  in  the  next 
world,  when  they  hear  of  a  man  dying  with  a  lie  on  his 
lips  or  with  an  unrepented  action  ?  And  why  have  both 
the  hardness  of  heart  until  the  end  and  the  death-bed 
repentance  appealed  so  forcibly  to  the  imagination  of 
poets  ?  The  discussion  as  to  the  "  euthanasia  "  of  atheists, 
which  was  so  popular  in  the  eighteenth  century,  is  more 
than  a  mere  historical  curiosity  as  F.  A.  Lange  con- 
sidered it. 

I  adduce  these  considerations  not  merely  to  suggest  a 
possibility  which  is  hardly  more  than  a  guess.  It  seems 
to  be  unthinkable  that  it  is  not  the  case  that  many  more 
people  than  actual  geniuses  have  some  trace  of  genius. 
The  quantitative  difference  in  natural  endowment  will 
be  most  marked  at  the  moment  when  the  endowrr'^nt 
becomes  active.  And  for  most  men  this  moment  is  the 
point  of  dearh.  If  we  were  not  accustomed  to  regard  men 
of  genius  as  a  separate  class  shut  off  from  the  others  like  the 
payers  of  income-tax,  we  should  find  less  difficulty  in 
grafting  these  new  ideas  on  the  old.  And  just  as  the  earliest 
recollections  of  childhood  which  a  man  has  are  not  the 
result    of    some     external     event    breaking    through    the 

*  I  venture  to  remind  readers  how  often  at  the  approach  of 
death  those  who  have  been  occupied  with  purely  scientific  matters 
have  turned  to  religious  problems,  e.g.,  Newton,  Gauss,  Riemann, 
Weber. 

I 


I30  SEX  AND  CHARACTER 

continuity  of  the  past  course  of  his  life,  but  are  the  result 
of  his  internal  development,  there  comes  to  every  one  a  day 
on  which  his  consciousness  is  so  intensified  that  remem- 
brance remains,  and  from  that  time  onwards,  according  to 
his  endowment,  more  or  fewer  remembrances  are  formed 
(a  factor  which  by  itself  upsets  the  whole  of  modern 
psychology),  so  in  different  men  there  are  many  different 
stimulants  of  the  consciousness  of  which  the  last  is  the 
hour  of  death,  and  from  the  point  of  view  of  their  de- 
gree of  genius  men  might  almost  be  classified  by  the 
number  of  things  that  excite  their  consciousness.  I  take 
this  opportunity  of  again  urging  the  falseness  of  a  doc- 
trine of  modern  psychology  (which  treats  men  simply  as 
better  or  worse  pieces  of  registering  apparatus  and  takes 
no  notice  of  the  internal,  ontogenetic  development  of  the 
mind) ;  I  mean  the  idea  that  in  youth  we  retain  the  greatest 
number  of  impressions.  We  must  not  confuse  really  ex- 
perienced impressions  with  the  mere  material  on  which  to 
exercise  memorising.  Such  stuff  a  child  learns  more  easily 
simply  because  it  is  not  weighted  with  mental  impres- 
sions. A  psychology  which  is  opposed  to  experience  in 
matters  so  fundamental  must  be  rejected.  What  I  am 
attempting  at  present  is  no  more  than  to  give  the  faintest 
indication  of  that  ontogenetic  psychology  or  theoretical 
biography  which  sooner  or  later  will  replace  what  now 
passes  for  the  science  of  mind.  Every  programme  repre- 
sents some  definite  conviction  ;  before  we  wish  to  reach  a 
goal  we  have  some  definite  conception  of  what  the  goal 
is  to  be.  The  name  "  theoretical  biography  "  will  define 
the  new  subject  from  philosophy  and  physiology,  and  the 
biological  method  of  treatment  introduced  by  Darwin, 
Spencer,  and  others  will  be  widened  until  it  becomes  a 
science  capable  of  giving  a  rational  orderly  account  of 
the  whole  course  of  the  mental  life  from  the  cradle  to  the 
grave.  It  is  to  be  called  biography,  not  biology,  because 
it  is  to  deal  with  the  investigation  of  the  permanent  laws 
that  rule  the  mental  development  of  an  individual,  whereas 
biology  itself  concerns  itself   with  individuals  themselves. 


TALENT  AND  MEMORY  131 

The  new  knowledge  will  seek  general  points  of  view  and 
the  establishment  of  types.  Psychology  must  try  to  be- 
come theoretical  biography.  Existing  psychology  would 
find  its  place  in  the  branches  of  the  new  science,  and  in 
this  way  only  would  Wundt's  desire  to  establish  the  founda- 
tions of  a  science  of  the  mind  be  fulfilled.  It  would  be 
absurd  to  despair  of  this  simply  because  of  the  uselessness 
of  the  existing  science  of  the  mind  which  has  not  yet  even 
grasped  its  own  object.  In  this  way  a  justification  for 
experimental  psychology  might  yet  be  found,  in  spite  of  the 
important  results  of  the  investigations  by  Windelband  and 
Rickert  on  the  relation  between  natural  and  psychical 
science,  or  the  old  dichotomy  between  the  physical  and 
mental  sciences. 

The  relation  between  the  continuity  of  memory  and  the 
desire  for  immortality  is  borne  out  by  the  fact  that  woman 
is  devoid  of  the  desire  for  immortality.  It  is  to  be  noted 
that  those  persons  are  quite  wrong  who  have  attributed  the 
desire  for  immortality  to  the  fear  of  death.  Women  are  as 
much  afraid  of  death  as  are  men,  but  they  have  not  the 
longing  for  immortality. 

My  attempted  explanation  of  the  psychological  desire  for 
immortality  is  as  yet  more  an  indication  of  the  connection 
between  the  desire  and  memory  than  a  deduction  from  a 
higher  natural  law.  It  will  always  be  found  that  the  con- 
nection actually  exists  ;  the  more  a  man  lives  in  his  past 
(not,  as  a  superficial  reader  might  guess,  in  his  future)  the 
more  intense  will  be  his  longing  for  immortality.  The  lack 
of  the  desire  for  immortality  in  women  is  to  be  associated 
with  the  lack  in  them  of  reverence  for  their  own  personality. 
It  seems,  however,  that  the  absence  of  both  reverence  and 
desire  for  immortality  in  woman  is  due  to  a  more  general 
principle,  and  in  the  same  fashion  in  the  case  of  man  the 
co-existence  of  a  higher  form  of  memory  and  the  desire  for 
immortality  may  be  traced  to  some  deeper  root.  So  far,  I 
have  attempted  only  to  show  the  coincidence  of  the  two, 
how  the  deep  respect  for  their  own  past  and  the  deep  desire 
for  their  own  future  are  to  be  found  in  the  same  individuals. 


132  SEX  AND  CHARACTER 

It  will  now  be  my  task  to  find  the  common  origin  of  these 
two  factors  of  the  mind. 

Let  us  take  as  a  starting-point  what  we  were  able  to  lay 
down  as  to  the  universality  of  the  memory  of  great  men. 
To  such  everything  is  equally  real:  what  took  place  long  ago 
and  the  most  recent  experience.  Thus  it  happens  that  a 
single  experience  does  not  end  with  the  moment  of  time  in 
which  it  happened,  does  not  disappear  as  this  moment  of 
time  disappears,  but  through  the  memory  is  wrested  from 
the  grasp  of  time.  vM^^mory  makes  experience  timeless  ;  the 
essence  of  it  is  that  it  should  transcend  time.  A  man  can 
only  remember  the  past  because  memory  is  free  from  the 
control  of  time,  because  events  which  in  nature  are  functions 
of  time,  in  the  spirit  have  conquered  time) 

But  here  a  difficulty  crops  up.  How  can  memory  be  a 
negation  of  time  if,  on  the  other  hand,  it  is  certain  that  if 
we  had  no  memory  we  should  be  unconscious  of  time  ?  It 
is  certainly  true  that  we  shall  always  be  conscious  of  the 
passing  of  time  by  our  memory  of  the  past.  If  the  two  are 
in  so  intimate  a  relation  how  can  the  one  be  the  negation  of 
the  other  ? 

Vrhe  difficulty  is  easy  to  resolve.  It  is  just  because  a 
living  creature — not  necessarily  a  human  being — by  being 
endowed  with  memory  is  not  wholly  absorbed  by  the 
experiences  of  the  moment  that  it  can,  so  to  speak,  oppose 
itself  to  time,  take  cognisance  of  it,  and  make  it  the  subject 
of  observation.  Were  the  being  wholly  abandoned  to  the 
experience  of  the  moment  and  not  saved  from  it  by  memory 
then  it  would  change  with  time  and  be  a  floating  bubble  in 
the  stream  of  events  ;  it  could  never  be  conscious  of  time, 
for  consciousness  implies  duality.  The  mind  must  have 
transcended  time  to  grasp  it,  it  must  have  stood  outside  it 
in  order  to  be  able  to  reflect  upon  it.  This  does  not  apply 
merely  to  special  moments  of  time,  as,  for  instance,  to  the 
case  that  we  cannot  be  conscious  of  sorrow  until  the  sorrow 
is  over,  but  it  is  a  part  of  the  conception  of  time.  If  we 
could  not  free  ourselves  from  time,  we  could  have  no 
knowledge  of  time^ 


TALENT  AND  MEMORY  133 

In  order  to  understand  the  condition  of  timelessness  let 
us  reflect  on  what  memory  rescues  from  time.  What  tran- 
scends time  is  only  what  is  of  interest  to  the  individual, 
what  has  meaning  for  him  ;  in  fact,  all  that  he  assigns  value 
to.  We  remember  only  the  things  that  have  some  value  for 
us  even  if  we  are  unconscious  of  the  value.  It  is  the  value 
that  creates  the  timelessness.  We  forget  everything  that  has 
no  value  for  us  even  if  we  are  unconscious  of  that  absence 
of  value. 

What  has  value,  then,  is  timeless  ;  or,  to  put  it  the  other 
way,  a  thing  has  the  more  value  the  less  it  is  a  function 
of  time.  In  all  the  world  value  is  in  proportion  to  inde- 
pendence of  time  ;  only  things  that  are  timeless  have  a 
positive  value.  Although  this  is  not  what  I  take  to  be  the 
deepest  and  fullest  meaning  of  value,  it  is,  at  least,  the  first 
special  law  of  the  theory  of  values. 

A  hasty  survey  of. common  facts  will  suffice  to  prove  this 
relation  between  value  and  duration.  We  are  always  in- 
clined to  pay  little  attention  to  the  views  of  those  whom  we 
have  known  only  for  a  short  time,  and,  as  a  rule,  we  think 
little  of  the  hasty  judgments  of  those  who  easily  change  their 
ideas.  On  the  other  hand,  uncompromising  fixedness  gains 
respect,  even  if  it  assume  the  form  of  vindictiveness  or 
obstinacy.  The  cere  perennins  of  the  Roman  poets  and  the 
Egyptian  pyramids  lasting  for  forty  centuries  are  favourite 
images.  The  reputation  a  man  leaves  behind  him  would 
soon  be  depreciated  were  it  suspected  that  it  would  soon 
disappear  instead  of  being  handed  down  the  centuries.  A 
man  dislikes  to  be  told  that  he  is  always  changing  ;  but  let  it 
be  put  that  he  is  simply  showing  new  sides  of  his  character 
and  he  will  be  proud  of  the  permanence  through  the 
changes.  He  who  is  tired  of  life,  for  whom  life  has  ceased 
to  be  of  interest,  is  interesting  to  no  one.  The  fear  of  the 
extinction  of  a  name  or  of  a  family  is  well  known. 

So  also  statute  laws  and  customs  lose  in  value  if  their 
validity  is  expressly  limited  in  time  ;  and  if  two  people  are 
making  a  bargain,  they  will  be  the  more  ready  to  distrust 
one  another  if  the  bargain  is  to  be  only  of  short  duration. 


134  SEX  AND  CHARACTER 

In  fact,  the  value  that  we  attach  to  things  depends  to  a  large 
extent  on  our  estimate  of  their  durability. 

This  law  of  values  is  the  chief  reason  why  men  are  inte- 
rested in  their  death  and  their  future.  The  desire  for  value 
shows  itself  in  the  efforts  to  free  things  from  time,  and  this 
pressure  is  exerted  even  in  the  case  of  things  which  sooner 
or  later  must  change,  as,  for  instance,  riches  and  position 
and  everything  that  we  call  the  goods  of  this  world.  Here 
lies  the  psychological  motive  for  the  making  of  wills  and  the 
bestowal  of  property.  The  motive  is  not  care  for  relatives, 
because  a  man  without  relatives  very  often  is  more  anxious 
to  settle  his  goods,  not  feeling,  perhaps,  like  the  head  of 
a  family,  that  in  any  event  his  existence  will  have  some 
kind  of  permanence,  that  traces  of  him  will  be  left  after  his 
own  death. 

The  great  politician  or  ruler,  and  especially  the  despot, 
whose  rule  ends  with  his  death,  seeks  to  increase  his  own 
value  by  making  it  independent  of  time.  He  may  attempt 
it  through  a  code  of  laws  or  a  biography  like  that  of  Julius 
Caesar,  by  some  great  philosophical  undertaking,  by  the 
founding  of  museums  or  collections,  or  (and  this  perhaps  is 
the  favourite  way)  by  alterations  of  the  calendar.  And  he 
seeks  to  extend  his  power  to  the  utmost  during  his  life-time, 
to  preserve  it  and  make  it  stable  by  enduring  contracts  and 
diplomatic  marriages,  and  most  of  all  by  attacking  and  re- 
moving everything  that  could  endanger  the  permanence  of 
his  kingdom.     And  so  the  politician  becomes  a  conqueror. 

Psychological  and  philosophical  investigations  of  the 
theory  of  values  have  neglected  the  time  element.  Perhaps 
this  is  because  they  have  been  very  much  under  the  influence 
of  political  economy.  I  believe,  however,  that  the  appli- 
cation of  my  principle  to  political  economy  would  be  of 
considerable  value.  Very  slight  reflection  will  lead  one  to 
see  that  in  commercial  affairs  the  time  element  is  a  most 
important  factor  in  estimating  value.  The  common  defini- 
tion of  value,  that  it  is  in  proportion  to  the  power  of  the 
thing  valued  to  relieve  our  wants,  is  quite  incomplete  with- 
out the  element  of  time.     Such  things  as  air  and  water  have 


TALENT  AND   MEMORY  135 

no  value  only  in  so  far  as  they  are  not  localised  and 
individualised  ;  but  as  soon  as  they  have  been  localised  and 
individualised,  and  so  received  form,  they  have  received  a 
quality  that  may  not  last,  and  with  the  idea  of  duration 
comes  the  idea  of  value.  Form  and  timelessness,  or  indi- 
viduation and  duration,  are  the  two  factors  which  compose 
value. 

Thus  it  can  be  shown  that  the  fundamental  law  of  the 
theory  of  value  applies  both  to  individual  psychology  and  to 
social  psychology.  And  now  I  can  return  to  what  is,  after 
all,  the  special  task  of  this  chapter. 

The  first  general  conclusion  to  be  made  is  that  the  desire 
for  timelessness,  a  craving  for  value,  pervades  ail  spheres  of 
human  activity.  And  this  desire  for  real  value,  which  is 
deeply  bound  up  with  the  desire  for  power,  is  completely 
absent  in  the  woman.  It  is  only  in  comparatively  rare  cases 
that  old  women  trouble  to  make  exact  directious  about  the 
disposition  of  their  property,  a  fact  in  obvious  relation  with 
the  absence  in  them  of  the  desire  for  immortality. 

Over  the  dispositions  of  a  man  there  is  the  weight  of 
something  solemn  and  impressive — something  which  makes 
him  respected  by  other  men. 

The  desire  for  immortality  itself  is  merely  a  specific  case 
of  the  general  law  that  only  timeless  thmgs  have  a  positive 
value.  On  this  is  founded  its  connection  with  memory. 
The  permanence  with  which  experiences  stay  with  a  man  is 
proportional  to  the  significance  which  they  had  for  him. 
Putting  it  in  a  paradoxical  form,  I  may  say  :  Value  is 
created  by  the  past.  Only  that  which  has  a  positive  value 
remains  protected  by  memory  from  the  jaws  of  time  ;  and 
so  it  may  be  with  tlie  individual  psychical  life  as  a  whole. 
If  it  is  to  have  a  positive  value,  it  must  not  be  a  function 
of  time,  but  must  subdue  time  by  eternal  duration  after 
physical  death.  This  draws  us  incomparably  nearer  the 
innermost  motive  of  the  desire  for  immortality.  The  com- 
plete loss  of  significance  which  a  rich,  individual,  fully-lived 
life  would  suffer  if  it  were  all  to  end  with  death,  and  the 
consequent  senselessness  of  everything,  as  Goethe  said,  in 


136  SEX  AND  CHARACTER 

other  words,  to  Eckermann  (February  14,  1829)  lead  to 
the  demand  for  immortality.  The  strongest  craving  for 
immortality  is  possessed  by  the  genius,  and  this  is  explained 
by  all  the  other  facts  which  have  been  discussed  as  to  his 
nature. 

Memory  only  fully  vanquishes  time  when  it  appears  in  a 
universal  form,  as  in  universal  men. 

The  genius  is  thus  the  only  timeless  man — at  least,  this 
and  nothing  else  is  his  ideal  of  himself ;  he  is,  as  is  proved 
by  his  passionate  and  urgent  desire  for  immortality,  just  the 
man  with  the  strongest  demand  for  timeiessness,  with  the 
greatest  desire  for  value.* 

<And  now  we  are  face  to  face  with  an  almost  astonishing 
coincidence.  The  timeiessness  of  the  genius  will  not  only 
be  manifest  in  relation  to  the  single  moments  of  his  life,  but 
also  in  his  relation  to  what  is  known  as  "  his  generation,"  or, 
in  a  narrower  sense,  "  his  time."  As  a  matter  of  fact,  he 
has  no  relations  at  all  with  it.  The  age  does  not  create  the 
genius  it  requires.  The  genius  is  not  the  product  of  his 
age,  is  not  to  be  explained  by  it,  and  we  do  him  no  honour 
if  we  attempt  to  account  for  him  by  it.) 

Carlyle  justly  noted  how  many  epochs  had  called  for 
great  men,  how  badly  they  had  needed  them,  and  how  they 
still  did  not  obtain  them. 

The  coming  of  genius  remains  a  mystery,  and  men 
reverently  abandon  their  efforts  to  explain  it.  And  as  the 
causes  of  its  appearance  do  not  lie  in  any  one  age,  so  also 
the  consequences  are  not  limited  by  time.  The  achieve- 
ments of  genius  live  for  ever,  and  time  cannot  change  them, 
By  his  works  a  man  of  genius  is  granted  immortality  on  the 
earth,  and  thus  in  a  threefold  manner  he  has  transcended 
time.  His  universal  comprehension  and  memory  forbid 
the  annihilation  of  his  experiences  with  the  passing  of  the 

*  It  is  often  a  cause  for  astonishment  that  men  with  quite  ordi- 
nary, even  vulgar,  natures  experience  no  fear  of  death.  But  it  is 
quite  explicable  :  it  is  not  the  fear  of  death  which  creates  the  desire 
for  immortality,  but  the  desire  for  immortality  which  causes  fear  of 
death. 


TALENT  AND  MEMORY  137 

moment  in  which  each  occurred  ;  his  birth  is  independent 
of  his  age,  and  his  work  never  dies. 

Here  is  the  best  place  to  consider  a  question  which, 
strangely  enough,  appears  to  have  received  no  attention. 
The  question  is,  if  there  be  anything  akin  to  genius  in  the 
world  of  animals  and  plants  ?  Although  it  must  be 
admitted  that  exceptional  forms  occur  amongst  animals 
and  plants,  these  cannot  be  regarded  as  coming  under  our 
definition  of  genius.  Talent  may  exist  amongst  them  as 
amongst  men  below  the  standard  of  genius.  But  the 
special  gift,  what  Moreau,  Lombroso,  and  others  have  called 
the  "  divine  spark,"  we  must  deny  to  animals.  This  limita- 
tion is  not  jealousy  nor  the  anxious  guarding  of  a  privilege, 
but  is  founded  on  good  grounds. 

Is  there  anything  unexplained  by  the  assumption  that  the 
first  appearance  of  genius  was  in  man  !  In  the  first  place,  it 
is  because  of  this  that  the  human  race  has  an  objective 
mind  ;  in  other  words,  that  man  is  the  only  organism  with  a 
history. 

^The  history  of  the  human  race  (naturally  I  mean  the 
history  of  its  mind  and  not  merely  of  its  wars)  is  readily 
intelligible  on  the  theory  of  the  appearance  of  genius,  and 
of  the  imitation  by  the  more  monkey-like  individuals  of  the 
conduct  of  those  with  genius.  The  chief  stages,  no  doubt, 
were  house-building,  agriculture,  and,  above  all,  speech. 
Every  single  word  has  been  the  invention  of  a  single  man, 
as,  indeed,  we  still  see,  if  we  leave  out  of  consideration  the 
merely  technical  terms.  How  else  could  language  have 
arisen  ?  The  earliest  words  were  "  onomatopoetic  "  ;  a 
sound  similar  to  the  exciting  cause  was  evolved  almost 
without  the  will  of  the  speaker,  in  direct  response  to  the 
sensuous  stimulation.  All  the  other  words  were  originally 
metaphors,  or  comparisons,  a  kind  of  primitive  poetry,  for 
all  prose  has  come  from  poetry,  f  Many,  perhaps  the 
majority  of  the  greatest  geniuses,  have  remained  unknown. 
Think  of  the  proverbs,  now  almost  commonplaces,  such  as 
"  one  good  turn  deserves  another."  These  were  said  for 
the  first  time  by  some  great  man.     How  many  quotations 


138  SEX  AND  CHARACTER 

from  the  classics,  or  sayings  of  Christ,  have  passed  into  the 
common  language,  so  that  we  have  to  think  twice  before  we 
can  remember  who  were  the  authors  of  them.  Language 
is  as  little  the  work  of  the  multitude  as  our  ballads.  Every 
form  of  speech  owes  much  that  is  not  acknowledged  to 
individuals  of  another  language.  Because  of  the  universality 
of  genius,  the  words  and  phrases  that  he  invents  are  useful 
not  only  to  those  who  use  the  language  in  which  he  wrote 
them.  /A  nation  orients  itself  by  its  own  geniuses,  and 
derives  from  them  its  ideas  of  its  own  ideals,  but  the  guiding 
star  serves  also  as  a  light  to  other  nations.  As  speech  has 
been  created  by  a  few  great  men,  the  most  extraordinary 
wisdom  lies  concealed  in  it,  a  wisdom  which  reveals  itself 
to  a  few  ardent  explorers  but  which  is  usually  overlooked 
by  the  stupid  professional  philologists.^ 

The  genius  is  not  a  critic  of  language,  but  its  creator,  as 
he  is  the  creator  of  all  the  mental  achievements  which  are 
the  material  of  culture  and  which  make  up  the  objective 
mind,  the  spirit  of  the  peoples.  The  "timeless"  men  are 
those  who  make  history,  for  history  can  be  made  only  by 
those  who  are  not  floating  with  the  stream.  It  is  only  those 
who  are  unconditioned  by  time  who  have  real  value,  and 
whose  productions  have  an  enduring  force.  And  the 
events  that  become  forces  of  culture  become  so  only  because 
they  have  an  enduring  value. 

If  we  make  a  criterion  of  genius  the  exhibition  of  this 
threefold  "  timelessness  "  we  shall  have  a  measure  by  which 
it  is  easy  to  test  all  claimants.  Lombroso  and  Türck  have 
expanded  the  popular  view  which  ascribes  genius  to  all 
whose  intellectual  or  practical  achievements  are  much 
above  the  average.  Kant  and  Schelling  have  insisted  on 
the  more  exclusive  doctrine  that  genius  can  be  predicated 
only  of  the  great  creative  artists.  The  truth  probably  lies 
between  the  two.  I  am  inclined  to  think  that  only  great 
artists  and  great  philosophers  (amongst  the  latter,  I  include, 
above  all,  the  great  religious  teachers)  have  proved  a  claim 
to  genius.  Neither  the  "  man  of  action  "  nor  "  the  man  of 
science  "  has  any  claim. 


TALENT  AND  MEMORY  139 

Men  of  action,  famous  politicians  and  generals,  may 
possess  a  few  traits  resembling  genius  (particularly  a 
specially  good  knowledge  of  men  and  an  enormous  capacity 
for  remembering  people).  The  psychology  of  such  traits 
will  be  dealt  with  later  ;  they  are  confused  with  genius  only 
by  those  whom  the  externals  of  greatness  dazzle.  The  man 
of  genius  almost  typically  renounces  such  external  greatness 
because  of  the  real  greatness  within  him.  The  really  great 
man  has  the  strongest  sense  of  values  ;  the  distinguished 
general  is  absorbed  by  the  desire  for  power.  The  former 
seeks  to  link  power  with  real  value  ;  the  latter  desires  that 
power  itself  should  be  valued.  Great  generals  and  great 
politicians,  like  the  bird  Phoenix,  are  born  out  of  fiery  chaos 
and  like  it  disappear  again  in  chaos.  The  great  emperor 
or  the  great  demagogue  is  the  only  man  who  lives  entirely 
in  the  present ;  he  does  not  dream  of  a  more  beautiful, 
better  future  ;  his  mind  does  not  dwell  on  his  own  past 
which  has  already  passed,  and  so  in  the  two  ways  most 
possible  to  man,  he  does  not  transcend  time,  but  lives  only 
in  the  moment.  The  great  genius  does  not  let  his  work  be 
determined  by  the  concrete  finite  conditions  that  surround 
him,  whilst  it  is  from  these  that  the  work  of  the  statesman 
takes  its  direction  and  its  termination.  And  so  the  great 
emperor  is  no  more  than  a  phenomenon  of  nature,  whereas 
the  genius  is  outside  nature  and  is  an  incorporation  of  the 
mind.  The  works  of  men  of  action  crumble  at  the  death  of 
their  authors,  if  indeed  they  have  not  already  decayed,  or 
they  survive  only  a  brief  time  leaving  no  traces  behind 
them  except  what  the  chronicles  record  as  having  been 
done  and  later  undone.  The  emperor  creates  no  works 
that  survive  time,  passing  into  eternity  ;  such  creations  come 
from  genius.  It  is  the  genius  in  reality  and  not  the  other 
who  is  the  creator  of  history,  for  it  is  only  the  genius  who 
is  outside  and  unconditioned  by  history.  The  great  man 
has  a  history,  the  emperor  is  only  a  part  of  history.  The 
great  man  transcends  time  ;  time  creates  and  time  destroys 
the  emperor. 

The  great  man  of  science,  unless  he  is  also  a  philosopher 


140  SEX  AND  CHARACTER 

(I  think  of  such  names  as  Newton  and  Gauss,  Linnasus 
and  Darwin,  Copernicus  and  GaHleo),  deserves  the  title  of 
genius  as  little  as  the  man  of  action.  Men  of  science  are 
not  universal ;  they  deal  only  with  a  branch  or  branches  of 
knowledge.  This  is  not  due,  as  is  sometimes  said,  merely  to 
the  extreme  modern  specialisation  that  makes  it  impossible 
to  master  everything.  Even  in  the  nineteenth  and  twentieth 
centuries  there  are  still  amongst  the  learned  men  individuals 
with  a  knowledge  as  many-sided  as  that  of  Aristotle  or 
Leibnitz  ;  the  names  of  von  Humboldt  and  William  Wundt 
at  once  come  to  my  mind.  The  absence  of  genius  comes 
from  something  much  more  deeply  seated  in  the  men  of 
science,  and  in  science  itself,  from  a  cause  which  I  shall 
explain  in  the  eighth  chapter.  Probably  some  one  may  be 
disposed  to  argue  that  if  even  the  most  distinguished  men 
of  science  have  not  a  knowledge  so  universal  as  that  of  the 
philosopher,  there  are  some  who  stand  on  the  outermost 
fringes  of  philosophy,  and  to  whom  it  is  yet  difficult  to  deny 
the  word  genius.  I  think  of  such  men  as  Fichte,  Schleier- 
macher, Carlyle,  and  Nietzsche.  Which  of  the  merely 
scientitic  has  felt  in  himself  an  unconditioned  comprehen- 
sion of  all  men  and  of  all  things,  or  even  the  capacity  to 
verify  any  single  thing  in  his  mind  and  by  his  mind  ?  On 
the  contrary,  has  not  the  whole  history  of  the  science  of  the 
last  thousand  years  been  directed  against  this  ?  This  is  the 
reason  why  men  of  science  are  necessarily  one-sided.  No 
man  of  science,  unless  he  is  also  a  philosopher,  however 
eminent  his  achievements,  has  that  continuous  unforgetting 
life  that  the  genius  exhibits,  and  this  is  because  of  his  want 
of  universality. 

finally,  it  is  to  be  observed  that  the  investigations  of  the 
scientific  are  always  in  definite  relation  to  the  knowledge  of 
their  day.  The  scientific  man  takes  possession  of  a  definite 
store  of  experimental  or  observed  knowledge,  increases  or 
alters  it  more  or  less,  and  then  hands  it  on.  And  much  will 
be  taken  away  from  his  achievements,  much  will  silently 
disappear ;  his  treatises  may  make  a  brave  show  in  the 
libraries,  but  they  cease  to  be  actively  alive.    On  the  other 


TALENT  AND  MEMORY  141 

hand,  we  can  ascribe  to  the  work  of  the  great  philosopher, 
as  to  that  of  the  great  artist,  an  imperishable,  unchangeable 
presentation  of  the  world,  not  disappearing  with  time,  and 
which,  because  it  was  the  expression  of  a  great  mind,  will 
always  find  a  school  of  men  to  adhere  to  it.  There  still  exist 
disciples  of  Plato  and  Aristotle,  of  Spinoza  and  Berkeley 
and  Bruno,  but  there  are  now  none  who  denote  them- 
selves as  followers  of  Galileo  or  Helmholtz,  of  Ptolemy  or 
Copernicus.  It  is  a  misuse  of  terms,  due  to  erroneous  ideas, 
to  speak  of  the  "  classics  "  of  science  or  of  pedagogy  in  the 
sense  that  we  speak  of  the  classics  of  philosophy  and  art.^ 

The  great  philosopher  bears  the  name  of  genius  deservedly 
and  with  honour.  And  if  it  will  always  be  the  greatest  pain 
to  the  philosopher  that  he  is  not  an  artist,  so  the  artist  envies 
the  philosopher  his  tenacious  and  controlled  strength  of 
systematic  thought,  and  it  is  not  surprising  that  the  artist  has 
taken  pleasure  in  depicting  Prometheus  and  Faust,  Prospera 
and  Cyprian,  Paul  the  Apostle  and  II  Penseroso.  The  philo- 
sopher and  the  artist  are  alternate  sides  of  one  another. 

We  must  not  be  too  lavish  in  attributing  genius  to  those 
who  are  philosophers  or  we  shall  not  escape  the  reproach  of 
being  merely  partisans  of  philosophy  against  science.  Such 
a  partisanship  is  foreign  to  my  purpose,  and,  I  hope,  to  this 
book,  ^t  would  only  be  absurd  to  discuss  the  claims 
to  genius  of  such  men  as  Anaxagoras,  Geulincx,  Baader,  or 
Emerson.  I  deny  genius  either  to  such  unoriginally  pro- 
found writers  as  Angelus  Silesius,  Philo  and  Jacobi,  or  to 
original  yet  superficial  persons  such  as  Comte  Feuerbach, 
Hume,  Herbart,  Locke,  and  Karneades.  The  history  of  art 
is  equally  full  of  preposterous  valuations,  whilst,  on  the 
other  hand,  the  history  of  science  is  extremely  free  from 
false  estimations./  The  history  of  science  busies  itself  very 
little  with  the  biographies  of  its  protagonists  ;  its  object  is 
a  system  of  objective,  collective  knowledge  in  which  the 
individual  is  swept  away.  The  service  of  science  demands 
the  greatest  sacrifice,  for  in  it  the  individual  human  being 
renounces  all  claim  to  eternity  as  such. 


CHAPTER    VI 

MEMORY,  LOGIC,  AND  ETHICS 

The  title  that  I  have  given  to  this  chapter  at  once  opens  the 
way  to  misinterpretation.  It  might  appear  as  if  the  author 
supported  the  view  that  logical  and  ethical  values  were  the 
objects  exclusively  of  empirical  psychology,  psychical 
phenomena,  like  perception  and  sensation,  and  that  logic 
and  ethics,  therefore,  were  subsections  of  psychology  and 
based  upon  psychology. 

I  declare  at  once  that  I  call  this  view,  the  so-called  psy- 
chologismus,  at  once  false  and  injurious.  It  is  false  because 
it  can  lead  to  nothing ;  and  injurious  because,  while  it 
hardly  touches  logic  and  ethics,  it  overthrows  psychology 
itself.  The  exclusion  of  logic  and  ethics  from  the  foun- 
dations of  psychology,  and  the  insertion  of  them  in  an 
appendix,  is  one  of  the  results  of  the  overgrowth  of  the 
doctrine  of  empirical  perception,  of  that  strange  heap  of 
dead,  fleshless  bones  which  is  known  as  empirical  psycho- 
logy, and  from  which  all  real  experience  has  been  excluded. 
I  have  nothing  to  do  with  the  empirical  school,  and  in  this 
matter  lean  towards  the  transcendentalism  of  Kant. 

As  the  object  of  my  work,  however,  is  to  discover  the 
differences  between  different  members  of  humanity,  and  not 
to  discuss  categories  that  would  hold  good  for  the  angels  in 
heaven,  I  shall  not  follow  Kant  closely,  but  remain  more 
directly  in  psychological  paths. 

The  justification  of  the  title  of  this  chapter  must  be 
reached  along  other  Unes.  The  tedious,  because  entirely 
new,  demonstration  of  the  earlier  part  of  my  work  has 
shown  that  the  human  memory  stands  in  intimate  relation 


MEMORY,  LOGIC,  AND  ETHICS         145 

with  things  hitherto  supDOsed  unconnected  with  it — such 
things  as  time,  value,  genius,  immortality.  I  have  attempted 
to  show  that  memory  stands  in  intimate  connection  with  all 
these.  There  must  be  some  strong  reason  for  the  complete 
absence  of  earlier  allusions  to  this  side  of  the  subject.  I 
believe  the  reason  to  be  no  more  than  the  inadequacy 
and  slovenliness  which  hitherto  have  spoiled  theories  of 
memory. 

I  must  here  call  attention  to  a  theory  first  propounded  by 
Charles  Bonnet  in  the  middle  of  the  eighteenth  century  and 
towards  the  end  of  the  nineteenth  century,  specially  insisted 
upon  by  Ewald  Hering  and  E.  Mach.  This  theory  regarded 
the  human  memory  as  being  only  a  special  case  of  a  pro- 
perty common  to  all  organised  matter,  the  property  that 
makes  the  path  of  new  stimuli  rather  easier  if  these  resemble 
stimuli  that  have  acted  at  some  former  time.  The  theory 
really  makes  the  human  memory  an  adaptation  in  the 
sense  of  Lamarck,  the  result  on  the  living  organism  of 
repeated  stimulation.  It  is  true  that  there  is  a  point  in 
common  between  the  human  memory  and  the  increase  of 
sensitiveness  caused  by  the  repeated  application  of  a  stimu- 
lus ;  that  identical  element  consists  in  the  permanence  of 
the  effect  of  the  first  stimulation.  There  is,  however,  a 
fundamental  difference  between  the  growth  of  a  muscle 
that  is  much  used  or  the  adaptation  of  the  eater  of  arsenic 
or  morphia  to  increased  doses,  and  the  recollection  of  past 
experiences  by  human  beings.  In  the  one  case  the  trace  of 
the  old  is  just  to  be  felt  in  the  new  stimulation  ;  in  the  other 
case,  by  means  of  the  consciousness,  the  old  situations  are 
actually  reproduced  with  all  their  individuation.  The  iden- 
tification of  the  two  is  so  superficial  that  it  is  a  waste  of 
time  to  dwell  longer  on  it. 

The  doctrine  of  association  as  the  theory  of  memory  is 
linked  with  the  foregoing  physiological  theory  as  a  matter 
of  history,  through  Hartley,  and,  as  a  matter  of  fact, 
because  the  idea  of  habit  is  shared  by  the  two.  The  asso- 
ciation theory  attributes  memory  to  the  mechanical  play 
of  the  linking  of  presentations  according  to  four  laws.     It 


144  SEX  AND  CHARACTER 

overlooks  the  fact  that  memory  (the  continuous  memory  of 
man)  is  a  function  of  the  will.  I  can  remember  a  thing  if 
I  really  will.  In  the  case  of  hypnosis,  when  the  recollec- 
tion of  all  that  has  been  forgotten  is  induced,  an  outside 
will  replaces  the  will  of  the  subject.  It  is  will  that  sets  in 
action  the  chains  of  association,  and  we  have  to  deal  here 
with  something  deeper  than  a  mechanical  principle. 

In  the  association  psychology,  which  first  splits  up  the 
psychic  life,  and  then  vainly  imagines  that  it  can  weld  the 
re-assorted  pieces  together  again,  there  is  another  confusion, 
the  confusion  between  memory  and  recollection,  which 
has  persisted  in  spite  of  the  well-founded  objections  of 
Avenarius  and  von  Höffding.  The  recognition  of  a  circum- 
stance does  not  necessarily  involve  the  special  reproduction 
of  the  former  impression,  even  although  there  seems  to  be  a 
tendency  for  the  new  impression,  at  least,  partly  to  recall  the 
old  one.  But  there  is  another  kind  of  recognition,  perhaps 
as  common,  in  which  the  new  impression  does  not  appear 
to  be  directly  linked  with  an  association,  but  in  which  it 
comes,  so  to  speak,  "coloured"  (James  would  say  "tinged") 
with  that  character  that  would  be  called  by  von  Höffding 
the  "familiarity  quality."  To  him  who  returns  to  his  native 
place  the  roads  and  streets  seem  familiar,  even  although  he 
has  forgotten  the  names,  has  to  ask  his  way,  and  can  think 
of  no  special  occasion  on  which  he  went  along  them.  A 
melody  may  seem  "  familiar  "  and  yet  I  may  be  unable  to 
say  where  I  heard  it.  /The  "  character "  (in  the  sense  of 
Avenarius)  of  familiarity,  of  intimacy,  hovers  over  the  sense- 
impression  itself,  and  analysis  can  detect  no  associations, 
none  of  the  fusing  of  the  old  and  new,  which,  according  to 
the  assertion  of  a  presumptuous  pseudo-psychology,  produces 
the  feeling ;  these  cases  are  quite  easy  to  distinguish  from 
cases  in  which  there  is  a  real  although  vague  association 
with  an  older  experience  in  henid  formj 

In  individual  psychology  this  distinction  is  of  great 
importance.  In  the  highest  types  of  mankind  the  conscious- 
ness of  the  continuous  past  is  present  in  so  active  a  form 
that  the  moment   such  a  one   sees  a  acquaintance  in  the 


MEMORY,  LOGIC,  AND  ETHICS         145 

street  he  is  at  once  able  to  reproduce  the  last  meeting  as  a 
complete  experience,  whereas  in  the  case  of  the  less  gifted 
person,  the  feeling  of  familiarity  that  makes  recognition 
possible,  occurs  when  he  is  able  to  recall  the  past  connection 
in  all  its  details. 

If  we  now,  in  conclusion,  ask  whether  or  no  other  animals 
than  man  possess  a  similar  faculty  for  remembering  and 
reviving  their  earlier  lives  in  their  entirety  it  is  most  probable 
that  the  answer  must  be  in  the  negative.  Animals  could 
not,  as  they  do,  remain  for  hours  at  a  time,  motionless  and 
peaceful  on  one  spot,  if  they  were  capable  of  thinking  of  the 
future  or  of  remembering  the  past.  Animals  have  the  feeling 
of  familiarity  and  the  sense  of  expectation  (as  we  find  from 
the  recognition  of  his  master  by  a  dog  after  twenty  years' 
absence) ;  but  they  possess  no  memory  and  no  hope.  They 
are  capable  of  recognition  through  the  sense  of  familiarity, 
but  they  have  no  memory. 

As  memory  has  been  shown  to  be  a  special  character 
unconnected  with  the  lower  spheres  of  psychical  life,  and 
the  exclusive  property  of  human  beings,  it  is  not  surprising 
that  it  is  closely  related  to  such  higher  things  as  the  idea  of 
value  and  of  time,  and  the  craving  for  immortality,  which 
is  absent  in  animals,  and  possible  to  men  only  in  so  far  as 
they  possess  the  quality  of  genius.  If  memory  be  an  essen- 
tially human  thing,  part  of  the  deepest  being  of  humanity, 
finding  expression  in  mankind's  most  peculiar  qualities, 
then  it  will  not  be  surprising  if  memory  be  also  related  to 
the  phenomena  of  logic  and  ethics.  I  have  now  to  explore 
this  relationship. 

I  may  set  out  from  the  old  proverb  that  liars  have  bad 
memories.  It  is  certain  that  the  pathological  liar  has  prac- 
tically no  memory.  About  male  liars  I  shall  have  more  to 
say  ;  they  are  not  common,  however.  But  if  we  remember 
what  was  said  as  to  the  absence  of  memory  amongst  women 
we  shall  not  be  surprised  at  the  existence  of  the  numerous 
proverbs  and  common  sayings  about  the  untruthfulness  of 
women.  It  is  evident  that  a  being  whose  memory  is  very, 
slight,  and  who  can  recall  only  in  the  most  imperfect  fashion 

K 


146  SEX  AND  CHARACTER 

\vhat  it  has  said  or  done,  or  suffered,  must  lie  easily  if  it  has 
the  gift  of  speech.  The  impulse  to  untruthfulness  will  be 
hard  to  resist  if  there  is  a  practical  object  to  be  gained,  and 
if  the  influence  that  comes  from  a  full  conscious  reality  of 
the  past  be  not  present.  The  impulse  to  lie  is  stronger  in 
woman,  because,  unlike  that  of  man,  her  memory  is  not 
continuous,  whilst  her  life  is  discrete,  unconnected,  dis- 
continuous, swayed  by  the  sensations  and  perceptions  of 
the  moment  instead  of  dominating  them.  Unlike  man,  her 
experiences  float  past  without  being  referred,  so  to  speak, 
to  a  definite,  permanent  centre ;  she  does  not  feel  herself, 
past  and  present,  to  be  one  and  the  same  throughout  all  her 
life.  It  happens  almost  to  every  man  that  sometimes  he 
"does  not  understand  himself";  indeed,  wilh  very  many 
men,  it  happens  (leaving  out  of  the  question  the  facts  of 
psychical  periodicity)  that  if  they  think  over  their  pasts  in 
their  minds  they  find  it  very  difficult  to  refer  all  the  events 
to  a  single  conscious  personality ;  they  do  not  grasp  how 
it  could  have  been  that  they,  being  what  they  feel  themselves 
at  the  time  to  be,  could  ever  have  done  or  felt  or  thought 
this,  that,  or  the  other.  And  yet  in  spite  of  the  difficulty, 
they  know  that  they  had  gone  through  these  experiences. 
The  feeling  of  identity  in  all  circumstances  of  life  is  quite 
wanting  in  the  true  woman,  because  her  memory,  even  if 
exceptionally  good,  is  devoid  of  continuity.  The  conscious- 
ness of  identity  of  the  male,  even  although  he  may  fail  to 
understand  his  own  past,  manifests  itself  in  the  very  desire 
to  understand  that  past.  Women,  if  they  look  back  on 
their  earlier  lives,  never  understand  themselves,  and  do  not 
even  wish  to  understand  themselves,  and  this  reveals  itself 
in  the  scanty  interest  they  give  to  the  attempts  of  man  to 
understand  them,  u  he  woman  does  not  interest  herself  about 
herself,  and  hence  there  have  been  no  female  psychologists, 
no  psychology  of  women  written  by  a  woman,  and  she  is 
incapable  of  grasping  the  anxious  desire  of  the  man  to 
understand  the  beginning,  middle,  and  end  of  his  individual 
life  in  their  relation  to  each  other,  and  to  interpret  the 
whole  as  a  continual,  logical,  necessary  sequence.) 


MEMORY,  LOGIC,  AND  ETHICS         147 

At  this  point  there  is  a  natural  transition  to  logic.  A 
creature  like  woman,  the  absolute  woman,  who  is  not  con- 
scious of  her  own  identity  at  different  stages  of  her  life,  has 
no  evidence  of  the  identity  of  the  subject-matter  of  thought 
at  different  times.  \If  in  her  mind  the  two  stages  of  a  change 
cannot  be  present  simultaneously  by  means  of  memory,  it 
is  impossible  for  her  to  make  the  comparison  and  note  the 
change.)  A  being  whose  memory  is  never  sufficiently  good 
as  to  make  it  psychologically  possible  to  perceive  identity 
through  the  lapse  of  time,  so  as  to  enable  her,  for  instance, 
to  pursue  a  quantity  through  a  long  mathematical  reckoning  ; 
such  a  creature  in  the  extreme  case  would  be  unable  to 
control  her  memory  for  even  the  moment  of  time  required 
to  say  that  A  will  be  still  A  in  the  next  moment,  to  pronounce 
judgment  on  the  identity  A  =  A,  or  on  the  opposite  propo- 
sition that  A  is  not  equal  to  A,  for  that  proposition  also 
requires  a  continuous  memory  of  A  to  make  the  comparison 
possible. 

I  have  been  making  no  mere  joke,  no  facetious  sophism 
or  paradoxical  proposition.  I  assert  that  the  judgment  of 
identity  depends  on  conceptions,  never  on  mere  perceptions 
and  complexes  of  perceptions,  and  the  conceptions,  as 
logical  conceptions,  are  independent  of  time,  retaining  their 
constancy,  whether  I,  as  a  psychological  entity,  think  them 
constant  or  not.  But  man  never  has  a  conception  in  the 
purely  logical  form,  for  he  is  a  psychological  being,  affected 
by  the  condition  of  sensations  ;  he  is  able  only  to  form  a 
general  idea  (a  typical,  connotative,  representative  concep- 
tion) out  of  his  individual  experiences  by  a  reciprocal 
effacing  of  the  differences  and  strengthening  of  the  simi- 
larities, thus,  however,  very  closely  approximating  to  an 
abstract  conception,  and  in  a  most  wonderful  fashion  using 
it  as  such.  He  must  also  be  able  to  preserve  this  idea 
which  he  thinks  clear,  although  in  reality  it  is  confused,  and 
it  is  memory  alone  that  brings  about  the  possibility  of  that 
Were  he  deprived  of  memory  he  would  lose  the  possibility 
of  thinking  logically,  for  this  possibility  is  incarnated,  so  to 
speak,  only  in  a  psychological  medium. 


148  SEX  AND  CHARACTER 

Memory,  then,  is  a  necessary  part  of  the  logical  faculty. 
The  propositions  of  logic  are  not  conditioned  by  the  exist- 
ence of  memory,  but  only  the  power  to  use  them.  The 
proposition  A  =  A  must  have  a  psychological  relation  to 
time,  otherwise  it  would  be  Ati  =  At2.  Of  course  this  is  not 
the  case  in  pure  logic,  but  man  has  no  special  faculty  of 
pure  logic,  and  must  act  as  a  psychological  being. 

I  have  already  shown  that  the  continuous  memory  is  the 
vanquisher  of  time,  and,  indeed,  is  necessary  even  for  the 
idea  of  time  to  be  formed.  And  so  the  continuous  memory 
is  the  psychological  expression  of  the  logical  proposition  of 
identity.  The  absolute  woman,  in  whom  memory  is  absent, 
cannot  take  the  proposition  of  identity,  or  its  contradictory, 
or  the  exclusion  of  the  alternative,  as  axiomatic. 

Besides  these  three  conditions  of  logical  thought,  the 
fourth  condition,  the  containing  of  the  conclusion  in  the 
major  premiss,  is  possible  only  through  memory.  That 
proposition  is  the  groundwork  of  the  syllogism.  The  pre- 
misses psychologically  precede  the  conclusion,  and  must  be 
retained  by  the  thinking  person  whilst  the  minor  premiss 
applies  the  law  of  identity  or  of  non-identity.  The  grounds 
for  the  conclusion  must  lie  in  the  past.  And  for  this  reason 
continuity  which  dominates  the  mental  processes  of  man  is 
bound  up  with  causality.  Every  psychological  application 
of  the  relation  of  a  conclusion  to  its  premisses  implies  the 
continuity  of  memory  to  guarantee  the  identity  of  the  propo- 
sitions. As  woman  has  no  continuous  memory  she  can 
have  no  principium  rationis  sufficientis. 

And  so  it  appears  that  woman  is  without  logic. 

George  Simmel  has  held  this  familiar  statement  to  be 
erroneous,  inasmuch  as  women  have  been  known  to  draw 
conclusions  with  the  strongest  consistency.  That  a  woman 
in  a  concrete  case  can  unrelentingly  pursue  a  given  course 
at  the  stimulation  of  some  object  is  no  more  a  proof  that 
she  understands  the  syllogism,  than  is  her  habit  of  perpetually 
recurring  to  disproved  arguments  a  proof  that  the  law  of 
identity  is  an  axiom  for  her.  ^he  point  at  issue  is  whether 
or  no  they  recognise  the  logical  axioms  as  the  criteria  of 


MEMORY,  LOGIC,  AND  ETHICS         149 

the  validity  of  their  thoughts,  as  the  directors  of  their  process 
of  thinking,  whether  they  make  or  do  not  make  these  the 
rule  of  conduct  and  the  principle  of  judgment.  A  woman 
cannot  grasp  that  one  must  act  from  principle ;  as  she  has 
no  continuity  she  does  not  experience  the  necessity  for 
logical  support  of  her  mental  processes.  Hence  the  ease 
with  which  women  assume  opinions.  If  a  woman  gives  vent 
to  an  opinion,  or  statement,  and  a  man  is  so  foolish  as 
to  take  it  seriously  and  to  ask  her  for  the  proof  of  it, 
she  regards  the  request  as  unkind  and  offensive,  and  as 
impugning  her  character.  A  man  feels  ashamed  of  himself, 
feels  himself  guilty  if  he  has  neglected  to  verify  a  thought, 
whether  or  no  that  thought  has  been  uttered  by  him  ;  he 
feels  the  obligation  to  keep  to  the  logical  standard  which  he 
has  set  up  for  himself.  Woman  resents  any  attempt  to 
require  from  her  that  her  thoughts  should  be  logical.  <^he 
may  be  regarded  as  "  logically  insane."/ 

The  most  common  defect  which  one  could  discover  in  the 
conversation  of  a  woman,  if  one  really  wished  to  apply  to  it 
the  standard  of  logic  (a  feat  that  man  habitually  shuns,  so 
showing  his  contempt  for  a  woman's  logic)  is  the  quaternio 
terminorum,  that  form  of  equivocation  which  is  the  result  of 
an  incapacity  to  retain  definite  presentations;  in  other  words, 
the  result  of  a  failure  to  grasp  the  law  of  identity.  Woman  is 
unaware  of  this ;  she  does  not  realise  the  law  nor  make  it  a 
criterion  of  thought.  <^Man  feels  himself  bound  to  logic  ;  the 
woman  is  without  this  feeling.  It  is  only  this  feeling  of  guilt 
that  guarantees  man's  efforts  to  think  logically.  Probably 
the  most  profound  saying  of  Descartes,  and  yet  one  that 
has  been  widely  misunderstood,  is  that  all  errors  are  crimes) 

(The  source  of  all  error  in  life  is  failure  of  memory.  Thus 
logic  and  ethics,  both  of  which  deal  with  the  furtherance  of 
truth  and  join  in  its  highest  service,  are  dependent  on 
memory.  The  conception  dawns  on  us  that  Plato  was  not 
so  far  wrong  when  he  connected  discernment  with  memory. 
Memory,  it  is  true,  is  not  a  logical  and  ethical  act,  but  it  is  a 
logical  and  ethical  phenomenon)  <^A  man  who  has  had  a 
vivid  and  deep  perception  regards  it  as  a  fault,  if  some  half- 


I50  SEX  AND  CHARACTER 

hour  afterwards  he  is  thinking  of  something  different,  even 
if  external  influences  have  intervened.  A  man  thinks  him- 
self unconscientious  and  blameworthy  if  he  notices  that  he 
has  not  thought  of  a  particular  portion  of  his  life  for  a  long 
time.  Memory,  moreover,  is  linked  with  morality,  because 
it  is  only  through  memory  that  repentance  is  possible.  All 
forgetfulness  is  in  itself  immoral.  And  so  reverence  ps  a 
moral  exercise  ;  it  is  a  duty  to  forget  nothing,  and  for  this 
reason  we  should  reverence  the  dead.)  Equally  from  logical 
and  ethical  motives,  man  tries  to  carry  logic  into  his  past,  in 
order  that  past  and  present  may  become  one. 

\It  is  with  something  of  a  shock  that  we  realise  here*that 
we  approach  the  deep  connection  between  logic  and  ethics, 
long  ago  suggested  by  Socrates  and  Plato,  discovered  anew 
by  Kant  and  Fichte,  but  lost  sight  of  by  living  workers. 

A  creature  that  cannot  grasp  the  mutual  exclusiveness  of 
A  and  not  A  has  no  difficulty  in  lying  ;  more  than  that, 
such  a  creature  has  not  even  any  consciousness  of  lying, 
being  without  a  standard  of  truth.  Such  a  creature  if 
endowed  with  speech  will  lie  without  knowing  it,  without 
the  possibility  of  knowing  it;  Veritas  norma  sui  et  falsa  est. 
There  is  nothing  more  upsetting  to  a  man  than  to  find,  when 
he  has  discovered  a  woman  in  a  lie,  and  has  asked  her, 
"  Why  did  you  lie  about  it  ? "  that  she  simply  does  not 
understand  the  question,  but  simply  looks  at  him  and 
laughingly  tries  to  soothe  him,  or  bursts  into  tearsi 

The  subject  does  not  end  with  the  part  played  by  memory. 
Lying  is  common  enough  amongst  men.  And  lies  can  be 
told  in  spite  of  a  full  remembrance  of  the  subject  which  for 
some  purpose  some  one  wishes  to  be  informed  about. 
Indeed,  it  might  almost  be  said  that  the  only  persons  who 
can  lie  are  those  who  misrepresent  facts  in  spite  of  a 
superior  knowledge  and  consciousness  of  them. 

-(Truth  must  first  be  regarded  as  the  real  value  of  logic  and 
ethics  before  it  is  correct  to  speak  of  deviations  from  truth 
for  special  motives  as  lies  from  the  moral  point  of  view. 
Those  who  have  not  this  high  conception  should  be 
adjudged  as  guilty  rather  of   vagueness  and  exaggeration 


MEMORY,  LOGIC,  AND  ETHICS         151 

than  of  lying  :  they  are  not  immoral  but  non-moral.     And 
in  this  sense  the  woman  is  non-moral.) 

The  root  of  such  an  absolute  misconception  of  truth  must 
lie  deep.  The  continuous  memory  against  which  alone  a 
man  can  be  false,  is  not  the  real  source  of  the  effort  for 
truth,  the  desire  for  truth,  the  basal  ethical-logical 
phenomenon,  but  only  stands  in  intimate  relation  with  it, 

(That  which  enables  man  to  have  a  real  relation  to  truth 
and  which  removes  his  temptation  to  lie,  must  be  some- 
thing independent  of  all  time,  something  absolutely 
unchangeable,  which  as  faithfully  reproduces  the  old  as  if  it 
were  new,  because  it  is  permanent  itself  ;  it  can  only  be 
that  source  in  which  all  discrete  experiences  unite  and 
which  creates  from  the  first  a  continuous  existence.  It  is 
what  produces  the  feehng  of  responsibility  which  oppresses 
all  men,  young  and  old,  as  to  their  actions,  which  makes 
them  know  that  they  are  responsible,  which  leads  to  the 
phenomena  of  repentance  and  consciousness  of  sin,  which 
calls  to  account  before  an  eternal  and  ever  present  self 
things  that  are  long  past,  its  judgment  being  subtler  and 
more  comprehensive  than  that  of  any  court  of  law  or  of  the 
laws  of  society,  and  which  is  exerted  by  the  individual  him- 
self quite  independently  of  all  social  codes  (so  condemning 
the  moral  psychology  which  would  derive  morality  from 
the  social  life  of  man).  Society  recognises  the  idea  of 
illegality,  but  not  of  sin  ;  it  presses  for  punishment  without 
wishing  to  produce  repentance  ;  lying  is  punished  by  the 
law  only  in  its  ceremonious  form  of  perjury,  and  error  has 
never  been  placed  under  its  ban.)  Social  ethics  with  its 
conception  of  duty  to  our  neighbour  and  to  society,  and 
practical  exclusion  from  consideration  of  the  other  fifteen 
hundred  million  human  beings,  cannot  extend  the  realm 
of  morality,  when  it  begins  by  limiting  it  in  this  arbitrary 
fashion. 

What  is  this  "  centre  of  apperception  "  that  is  superior  to 
time  and  change  ? 

It  can  be  nothing  less  than  what  raises  man  above  himself 
(as  a  part  of  the  world  of  sense)  which  joins  him  to  an 


152  SEX  AND  CHARACTER 

order  of  things  that  only  the  reason  can  grasp,  and  that 
puts  the  whole  world  of  sense  at  his  feet.  It  is  nothing  else 
than  personality. 

The  most  sublime  book  in  the  world,  the  "  Criticism  of 
Practical  Reason,"  has  referred  morality  to  an  intelli.^ent 
ego,  distinct  from  all  empirical  consciousness.  I  must  now 
turn  to  that  side  of  my  subject. 


CHAPTER  Vir 

LOGIC,  ETHICS  AND  THE  EGO 

(PAVID  Hume  is  well  known  to  have  abolished  the  concep- 
tion of  the  ego  by  seeing  in  it  only  a  bundle  of  different 
perceptions  in  continual  ebb  and  flow.  However  completely 
Hume  thought  himself  to  have  compromised  the  ego,  at 
least  he  explained  his  view  relatively  moderately.  He 
proposed  to  say  nothing  about  a  few  metaphysicians  who 
appeared  to  rejoice  in  another  kind  of  ego  ;  for  himself  he 
was  quite  certain  that  he  had  none,  and  he  dared  to  suppose 
that  the  majority  of  mankind,  leaving  the  few  peculiar 
metaphysicians  out  of  the  question,  were,  like  himself,  mere 
bundles.  So  the  polite  man  expressed  himself.  In  the 
next  chapter  I  shall  show  how  his  irony  recoils  on  himself. 
That  his  view  became  so  famous  depends  partly  on  the 
over-estimation  in  which  Hume  is  held  and  which  is  largely 
due  to  Kant.  Hume  was  a  most  distinguished  empirical 
psychologist,  but  he  cannot  be  regarded  as  a  genius,  the 
popular  view  notwithstanding.)  It  is  not  very  much  to  be 
the  first  of  English  philosophers,  but  Hume  has  not  even  a 
claim  to  that  position.  I  do  not  think  that  Kant  would 
have  given  so  much  praise  to  Hume  if  he  had  been  fully 
acquainted  with  all  Hume's  work  and  not  merely  with  the 
"  Enquiry,"  as  he  certainly  rejected  the  position  of  Spinoza, 
according  to  which  men  were  not  "  substances,"  but  merely 
accidents. 

-Lichtenberg,  who  took  the  field  against  the  ego  later  than 
Hume,  was  still  bolder.  He  is  the  philosopher  of  imperson- 
ality, and  calmly  corrects  the  conversational  "  I  think"  mto 
an  actual  "  it  thinks  "  ;  he  regards  the  ego  as  a  creation  of 


154  SEX  AND  CHARACTER 

the  grammarian.  In  this  Hume  had  anticipated  him,  inas- 
much as  he  also  had  declared,  at  the  end  of  his  analysis,  all 
disputes  as  to  the  identity  of  the  person  to  be  merely  a 
battle  of  words.) 

E.  Mach  has  recently  represented  the  universe  as  a 
coherent  mass,  and  the  egos  as  points  in  which  the  coherent 
mass  has  greater  consistency.  The  only  realities  are  the 
perceptions,  which  are  connected  in  one  individual  strongly, 
but  which  are  weaker  in  another  individual  who  is  thus 
differentiated  from  the  first. 

The  contents  of  the  perceptions  are  the  realities,  and  they 
persist  externally  to  the  worthless  personal  recollections. 
The  ego  is  not  a  real  but  only  a  practical  entity  and  cannot 
be  isolated,  and,  therefore,  the  idea  of  individual  immortality 
must  be  rejected.  None  the  less  the  idea  of  an  ego  is  not 
wholly  to  be  rejected  ;  here  and  there,  as,  for  instance,  in 
Darwin's  struggle  for  existence,  it  appears  to  have  some 
validity. 

It  is  extraordinary  how  an  investigator  who  has  accom- 
plished so  much,  not  only  as  a  historian  of  his  special  branch 
and  as  a  critic  of  ideas,  but  who  is  also  fully  equipped 
with  knowledge  of  biology,  should  have  paid  no  heed  to  the 
fact  that  every  organic  being  is  indivisible  from  the  first, 
and  is  not  composed  of  anything  like  atoms,  monads,  &c. 
The  first  distinctive  mark  of  the  living  as  opposed  to 
inorganic  matter  is  that  the  former  is  always  differentiated 
into  dissimilar,  mutually  dependent  parts,  and  is  not 
homogeneous  like  a  crystal.  And  so  it  should  have  been 
borne  in  mind  that  it  was  at  least  possible  that  individuation» 
the  fact  that  organic  beings  are  not  united,  like  Siamese 
twins,  would  prove  to  have  importance  in  psychical  matters, 
and  the  ego,  therefore,  was  more  than  Mach's  idea  of  it  as 
a  mere  waiting-hall  of  perceptions. 

It  may  be  that  there  exists  a  psychical  correlation  even 
amongst  animals.  Everythmg  that  an  animal  feels  and 
perceives  has  a  different  "  note "  or  "  colour  "  in  every 
individual.  This  individual  quality  is  not  only  characteristic 
of  the  class,  genus,   species,  race,  and  family,  but  also  is 


LOGIC,  ETHICS  AND  THE  EGO  155 

different  in  every  individual  of  the  same  family,  &c.  The 
idioplasm  is  the  physiological  equivalent  of  this  specific 
individual  quality  of  the  sensations  and  perceptions,  and 
there  are  reasons  analogous  with  those  in  favour  of  the 
supposition  of  an  idioplasm  for  the  supposition  of  an 
individual  character  amongst  animals.  The  sportsman 
who  has  to  do  with  dogs,  the  trainer  with  horses,  and  the 
keeper  with  animals  will  readily  admit  the  existence  of  this 
individuality  as  a  constant  element.  It  is  clear  that  we  have 
to  do  here  with  something  more  than  a  mere  rendezvous  of 
perceptions. 

But  even  if  this  psychical  analogue  of  the  idioplasm  were 
proved  to  exist  in  the  case  of  animals,  it  could  not  be 
ranked  with  the  intelligible  character,  the  existence  of  which 
in  any  living  creature  except  man  cannot  be  maintained. 
The  intelligible  character  of  men,  their  individuation,  has 
the  same  relation  to  empirical  character  that  memory  has 
to  the  simple  power  of  recognition.  And  finally  we  come 
to  identity,  by  which  the  structure,  form,  law,  and  cosmos 
persist  even  through  the  change  of  contents.  \The  conside- 
rations from  which  is  drawn  the  proof  of  the  existence  in 
man  of  such  a  noumenal,  trans-empirical  subject  must  now 
be  stated  briefly./  They  come  from  logic  and  ethics. 

Logic  deals  with  the  true  significance  of  the  principle  of 
identity  (also  with  that  of  contradiction  ;  the  exact  relation 
of  these  two,  and  the  various  modes  of  stating  it  are  con- 
troversial matters  outside  the  present  subject).  The  propo- 
sition A  =  A  is  axiomatic  and  self-evident.  It  is  the  primi- 
tive measure  of  truth  for  all  other  propositions  ;  however 
much  we  may  think  over  it  we  must  return  to  this  funda- 
mental proposition.  It  is  the  principle  of  the  distinction 
between  truth  and  error  ;  and  he  who  regards  it  as  meaning- 
less tautology,  as  was  the  case  with  Hegel  and  many  of  the 
later  empiricists  (this  being  not  the  only  surprising  point  of 
contact  between  two  schools  apparently  so  different)  is 
right  in  a  fashion,  but  has  misunderstood  the  nature  of  the 
proposition.  A  =  A,  the  principle  of  all  truth,  cannot  itself 
be  a  special  truth.     He  who  finds  the  proposition  of  identity 


156  SEX  AND  CHARACTER 

or  that  of  non-identity  meaningless  does  so  by  his  own 
fault.  He  must  have  expected  to  find  in  these  propositions 
special  ideas,  a  source  of  positive  knowledge.  ''^But  they 
are  not  in  themselves  knowledge,  separate  acts  of  thought, 
but  the  common  standard  for  all  acts  of  thought^  And  so 
they  cannot  be  compared  with  other  acts  of  thought.  <(The 
rule  of  the  process  of  thought  must  be  outside  thought. 
The  proposition  of  identity  does  not  add  to  our  knowledge  ; 
it  does  not  increase  but  rather  founds  a  kingdom.  The 
proposition  of  identity  is  either  meaningless  or  means 
everything.  Upon  what  do  the  propositions  of  identity 
and  of  non-identity  depend  ?  The  common  view  is  that 
they  are  judgments.  Sigwart,  for  instance,  who  has  recently 
discussed  the  matter,  puts  it  as  follows  :  The  two  judgments 
A  is  B  and  A  is  not  B  cannot  be  true  at  the  same  time 
because  the  judgment  "An  unlearned  man  is  learned" 
would  involve  a  contradiction  because  the  predicate 
"learned"  is  affirmed  of  a  subject  of  which  the  judg- 
ment has  been  made  implicitly  that  he  is  unlearned,  so 
that  in  reality  two  judgments  are  made,  X  is  learned  and 
X  is  unlearned.  The  "  psychologismus  "  of  this  method  of 
argument  is  plain.  It  has  recourse  to  a  temporary  judg- 
ment preceding  the  formation  of  the  conception  "unlearned 
man."  The  proposition,  however,  A  is  not  A  claims  validity 
quite  apart  from  the  past,  present,  or  future  existence  of 
other  judgments.  It  depends  on  the  conception  "  unlearned 
man."  It  makes  the  conception  more  certain  by  excluding 
contradictory  instances. 

^  This,  then,  gives  us  the  true  function  of  the  principles  of 
identity  and  non-identity.  They  are  materials  for  concep- 
tions^ 

This  function  concerns  only  logical  conceptions,  but  not 
what  have  been  called  psychological  conceptions.  The 
conception  is  always  represented  psychologically  by  a 
generalisation  ;  and  this  presentation  in  a  certain  fashion  is 
included  in  the  conception.  The  generalisation  represents 
the  conception  psychologically,  but  is  not  identical  with  it. 
It  can,  so  to  speak,  be  richer  (as  when  I  think  of  a  triangle) 


LOGIC,  ETHICS  AND  THE  EGO  157 

or  it  can  be  poorer  (the  conception  of  a  lion  contains  more 
than  my  generaUsation  of  Hons).  The  logical  conception 
is  the  plumb-line  which  the  attention  tries  to  follow  ;  it  is 
the  goal  and  pole-star  of  the  psychological  generalisation. 

\Pure  logical  thought  cannot  occur  in  the  case  of  men  ; 
it  would  be  an  attribute  of  deity.  A  human  being  must 
always  think  partly  psychologically  because  he  possesses 
not  only  reason  but  also  senses,  and  his  thought  cannot  free 
itself  from  temporal  experiences  but  must  remain  bound  by 
them.  Logic,  however,  is  the  supreme  standard  by  which 
the  individual  can  test  his  own  psychological  ideas  and 
those  of  others.  When  two  men  are  discussing  anything 
it  is  the  conception  and  not  the  varying  individual  pre- 
sentations of  it  that  they  aim  at.  )  The  conception,  then,  is 
the  standard  of  value  for  the  individual  presentations.  The 
mode  in  which  the  psychological  generalisation  comes  into 
existence  is  quite  independent  of  the  conception  and  has 
no  significance  in  respect  to  it.  The  logical  character 
which  invests  the  conception  with  dignity  and  power  is 
not  derived  from  experience,  for  experience  can  give  only 
vague  and  wavering  generalisations.  Absolute  constancy 
and  absolute  coherence  which  cannot  come  from  ex- 
perience are  the  essence  of  the  conception  of  that  power 
concealed  in  the  depths  of  the  human  mind  whose  handi- 
work we  try  hard  but  in  vain  to  see  in  nature.  Concep- 
tions are  the  only  true  realities,  and  the  conception  is  not 
in  nature  ;  it  is  the  rule  of  the  essence  not  of  the  actual 
existence. 

\When  I  enunciate  the  proposition  A  =  A,  the  meaning 
of  the  proposition  is  not  that  a  special  individual  A  of 
experience  or  of  thought  is  like  itself.  The  judgment  of 
identity  does  not  depend  on  the  existence  of  an  A.  It 
means  only  that  if  an  A  exists,  or  even  if  it  does  not  exist, 
then  A  =  A.  Something  is  posited,  the  existence  of  A  =  A 
whether  or  no  A  itself  exists.  It  cannot  be  the  result  of 
experience,  as  Mill  supposed,  for  it  is  independent  of  the 
existence  of  A.  But  an  existence  has  been  posited  ;  it  is 
not  the  existence  of  the  object ;  it  must  be  the  existence  of 


158  SEX  AND  CHARACTER 

the  subject.  "sThe  reality  of  the  existence  is  not  in  the  first 
A  or  the  second  A,  but  in  the  simultaneous  identity  of  the 
two.  And  so  the  proposition  A  =  A  is  no  other  than  the 
proposition  "  I  am."^ 

/From  the  psychological  point  of  view,  the  real  meaning 
oT^the  proposition  of  identity  is  not  so  difficult  to  interpret. 
It  is  clear  that  to  be  able  to  say  A  =  A,  to  establish  the  per- 
manence of   the   conception   through  the  changes  of  ex- 
perience, there  must  be  something  unchangeable,  and  this 
can  be  only  the  subject.     Were  I  part  of   the  stream  of 
change    I    could    not   verify   that    the    A    had   remained 
unchanged,   had   remained    itself.     Were    I    part    of    the 
change,   I   could    not   recognise   the   change.     Fichte   was 
right  when  he  stated  that  the  existence  of  the  ego  was  to 
be  found  concealed  in  pure  logic,  inasmuch  as  the  ego  is 
the  condition  of  intelligible  existence. 
/      The  logical  axioms  are  the  principle  of  all  truth.     These 
I   posit   an   existence   towards    which   all    cognition    serves. 
)  Logic  is  a  law  which  must  be  obeyed,  and   man  realises 
/  himself  only  in  so  far  as  he  is  logical.     He  finds  himself 
j  in  cognition.^ 

\  All  error  must  be  felt  to  be  crime.  And  so  man  must 
not  err.  He  must  find  the  truth,  and  so  he  can  find  it. 
The  duty  of  cognition  involves  the  possibility  of  cognition, 
the  freedom  of  thought,  and  the  hope  of  ascertaining 
truth.  In  the  fact  that  logic  is  the  condition  of  the  mind 
lies  the  proof  that  thought  is  free  and  can  reach  its  goal. 

O  can  treat  ethics  briefly  and  in  another  fashion,  inas- 
much as  what  I  have  to  say  is  founded  on  Kant's  moral 
philosophy.  The  deepest,  the  intelligible,  part  of  the  nature 
of  man  is  that  part  which  does  not  take  refuge  in 
causality,  but  which  chooses  in  freedom  the  good  or  the 
bad.^  This  is  manifest  in  consciousness  of  sin  and  in 
repentance.  No  one  has  attempted  to  explain  these  facts 
otherwise  ;  and  no  one  allows  himself  to  be  persuaded 
that  he  must  commit  this  or  that  act.  In  the  shall  there 
lies  the  possibility  of  the  can.  The  causal  determining 
factors,  the  lower  motives  that  act  upon  him,  he  is  fully 


LOGIC,  ETHICS  AND  THE  EGO  159 

aware  of,  but  he  remains  conscious  of  an  intelligible  ego 
free  to  act  in  a  different  way  from  other  egos. 

Truth,  purity,  faithfulness,  uprightness,  with  reference  to 
oneself  ;  these  give  the  only  conceivable  ethics.  Duty  is 
only  duty  to  oneself,  duty  of  the  empirical  ego  to  the 
intelligible  ego.  These  appear  in  the  form  of  two  impera- 
tives that  will  always  put  to  shame  every  kind  of  psych o- 
logismus — the  logical  law  and  the  moral  law.  The  internal 
direction,  the  categorical  imperatives  of  logic  and  morality 
which  dominate  all  the  codes  of  social  util'tarianism  are 
factors  that  no  empiricism  can  explain.  All  empiricism 
and  scepticism,  positivism  and  relativism,  instinctively  feel 
that  their  principal  difficulties  lie  in  logic  and  ethics.  And 
so  perpetually  renewed  and  fruitless  efforts  are  made  to 
explain  this  inward  discipline  empirically  and  psychologi- 
cally. 

Logic  and  ethics  are  fundamentally  the  same,  they  are 
no  more  than  duty  to  oneself.  They  celebrate  their  union 
by  the  highest  service  of  truth,  which  is  overshadowed  in 
the  one  case  by  error,  in  the  other  by  untruth.  <A11  ethics 
are  possible  only  by  the  laws  of  logic,  and  logic  is  no  more 
than  the  ethical  side  of  law.  Not  only  virtue,  but  also 
insight,  not  only  sanctity  but  also  wisdom,  are  the  duties 
and  tasks  of  mankind.  Through  the  union  of  these  alone 
comes  perfection.  \ 

Ethics,  however,  the  laws  of  which  are  postulates,  cannot 
be  made  the  basis  of  a  logical  proof  of  existence.  Ethics  are 
not  logical  in  the  same  sense  that  logic  is  ethical.  Logic 
proves  the  absolute  actual  existence  of  the  ego  ;  ethics  con- 
trol the  form  which  the  actuality  assumes.  Ethics  dominate 
logic  and  make  logic  part  of  their  contents. 

In  thinking  of  the  famous  passage  in  the  "Critique  of 
Practical  Reason,"  where  Kant  introduces  man  as  a  part  of 
the  intelligible  cosmos,  it  may  be  asked  how  Kant  assured 
himself  that  the  moral  law  was  inherent  in  personality. 
The  answer  Kant  gave  was  simply  that  no  other  and  no 
nobler  origin  could  be  found  for  it.  He  goes  no  further 
than  to  say  that  the  categorical  imperative  is  the  law  of 


i6o  SEX  AND  CHARACTER 

the  noumenon,  belonging  to  it  and  inherent  in  it  from  the 
beginning.  That,  however,  is  the  nature  of  ethics.  /  Ethics 
make  it  possible  for  the  intelligible  ego  to  act  free  from 
the  shackles  of  empiricism,  and  so  through  ethics,  the 
existence  of  whose  possibilities  logic  assures  us,  is  able  to 
become  actual  in  all  its  purit3^| 

There  remains  a  most  important  point  in  which  the 
Kantian  system  is  often  misunderstood.  It  reveals  itself 
plainly  in  every  case  of  wrong-doing. 

Duty  is  only  towards  oneself ;  Kant  must  have  realised 
this  in  his  earlier  days  when  first  he  felt  an  impulse  to  lie. 
Except  for  a  few  indications  in  Nietzsche,  and  in  Stirner, 
and  a  few  others,  Ibsen  alone  seems  to  have  grasped  the 
principle  of  the  Kantian  ethics  (notably  in  "  Brand "  and 
"  Peer  Gvnt ").  The  following  two  quotations  also  give 
the  Kantian  view  in  a  general  way  : 

First  Nebbel's  epigram,  "  Lies  and  Truth." 

"  Which  do  you  pay  dearer  for,  lies  or  the  truth  ?  The 
former  costs  you  yourself,  the  latter  at  most  your  happiness."  ) 

Next,  the  well-known  words  of  Sleika  from  the  "Wes- 
töstlichen Diwan  "  : 

(All  sorts  go  to  make  a  world, 
The  crowd  and  the  rogue  and  the  hero; 
But  the  highest  fortune  of  earth's  children 
Is  always  in  their  own  personality. 

It  matters  little  how  a  man  lives 

If  only  he  is  true  to  himself; 

It  matters  nothing  what  a  man  may  lose 

If  he  remains  what  he  really  is.) 

It  is  certainly  true  that  most  men  need  some  kind  of  a 
God.  A  few,  and  they  are  the  men  of  genius,  do  not  bow 
to  an  alien  law.  The  rest  try  to  justify  their  doings  and 
misdoings,  their  thinking  and  existence  (at  least  the  mental 
side  of  it),  to  some  one  else,  whether  it  be  the  personal  God 
of  the  Jews,  or  a  beloved,  respected,  and  revered  human 
being.  It  is  only  in  this  way  that  they  can  bring  their  lives 
under  the  social  law. 


LOGIC,  ETHICS  AND  THE  EGO  i6i 

Kant  was  permeated  with  his  conviction,  as  is  con- 
spicuous in  the  minutest  details  of  his  chosen  Hfe-work, 
that  man  was  responsible  only  to  himself,  to  such  an 
extent  that  he  regarded  this  side  of  his  theory  as  self- 
evident  and  least  likely  to  be  disputed.  This  silence  of  Kant 
has  brought  about  a  misunderstanding  of  his  ethics — the 
only  ethics  tenable  from  the  psychologically  introspective 
standpoint,  the  only  system  according  to  which  the  insistent 
strong  inner  voice  of  the  one  is  to  be  heard  through  the 
noise  of  the  many. 

■■  I  gather  from  a  passage  in  his  "  Anthropology  "  that  even 
in  the  case  of  Kant  some  incident  in  his  actual  earthly  life 
preceded  the  "  formation  of  his  character."  The  birth  of 
the  Kantian  ethics,  the  noblest  event  in  the  history  of  the 
world,  was  the  moment  when  for  the  first  time  the  dazzling 
awful  conception  came  to  him,  "  I  am  responsible  only  to 
myself ;  I  must  follow  none  other ;  I  must  not  forget 
myself  even  in  my  work  ;  I  am  alone  ;  I  am  free  ;  I  am  lord 
of  myself."  ; 

"  Two  things  fill  my  mind  with  ever  renewed  wonder 
and  awe  the  more  often  and  the  deeper  I  dwell  on  them — 
the  starry  vault  above  me  and  the  moral  law  within  me.  I 
must  not  look  on  them  both  as  veiled  in  mystery  or  think 
that  their  majesty  places  them  beyond  me.  I  see  them 
before  me,  and  they  are  part  of  the  consciousness  of  my 
existence.  The  first  arises  from  my  position  in  the  outer 
world  of  the  senses,  and  links  me  with  the  immeasurable 
space  in  which  worlds  and  worlds  and  systems  and  systems, 
although  in  immeasurable  time,  have  their  ebbs  and  flows, 
their  beginnings  and  ends.  The  second  arises  from  my 
invisible  self,  my  personality,  and  places  me  in  a  world  that 
has  true  infinity,  but  which  is  evident  only  to  the  reason 
and  with  which  I  recognise  myself  as  being  bound,  not 
accidentally  as  in  the  other  case  but  in  a  universal  and 
necessary  union.  On  the  one  hand,  the  consciousness  of 
an  endless  series  of  worlds  destroys  my  sense  of  importance, 
making  me  only  one  of  the  animal  creatures  which  must 
return  its  substance  again  to  the  planet  (that,  too,  being  nc 

L 


i62  SEX  AND  CHARACTER 

more  than  a  point  in  space)  from  whence  it  came,  after 
having  been  in  some  unknown  way  endowed  with  life  for  a 
brief  space.  The  second  point  of  view  enhances  my  im- 
portance, makes  me  an  intelHgence,  infinite  and  uncon- 
ditioned through  my  personaHty,  the  moral  law  in  which 
separates  me  from  the  animals  and  from  the  world  of  sense, 
removes  me  from  the  limits  of  time  and  space,  and  links 
me  with  infinity." 

The  secret  of  the  critique  of  practical  reason  is  that  man 
is  alone  in  the  world,  in  tremendous  eternal  isolation. 

He  has  no  object  outside  himself  ;  lives  for  nothing  else  ; 
he  is  far  removed  from  being  the  slave  of  his  wishes,  of  his 
abilities,  of  his  necessities ;  he  stands  far  above  social 
ethics  ;  he  is  alone. 

\rhus  he  becomes  one  and  all  ;  he  has  the  law  in  him, 
and  so  he  himself  is  the  law,  and  no  mere  changing  caprice. 
The  desire  is  in  him  to  be  only  the  law,  to  be  the  law  that 
is  ihimself,  without  afterthought  or  forethought.  This  is 
the  awful  conclusion,  he  has  no  longer  the  sense  that  there 
can  be  duty  for  him.  Nothing  is  superior  to  him,  to  the 
isolated  absolute  unity.  But  there  are  no  alternatives  for 
him  ;  he  must  respond  to  his  own  categorical  imperatives, 
absolutely,  impartially.  "  Freedom,"  he  cries  (for  instance, 
Wagner,  or  Schopenhauer),  "  rest,  peace  from  the  enemy ; 
peace,  not  this  endless  striving  "  ;  and  he  is  terrified.  Even 
in  this  wish  for  freedom  there  is  cowardice ;  in  the  igno- 
minious lament  there  is  desertion  as  if  he  were  too  small 
for  the  fight.  What  is  the  use  of  it  all,  he  cries  to  the 
universe ;  and  is  at  once  ashamed,  for  he  is  demanding 
happiness,  and  that  his  own  burden  should  rest  on  other 
shoulders.  Kant's  lonely  man  does  not  dance  or  laugh ; 
he  neither  brawls  nor  makes  merry ;  he  feels  no  need  to 
make  a  noise,  because  the  universe  is  so  silent  around  him. 
To  acquiesce  in  his  loneliness  is  the  splendid  supremacy  of 
the  Kantian.) 


CHAPTER  VIII 
THE  "I"   PROBLEM  AND   GENIUS 

•'  In  the  beginning  the  world  was  nothing  but  the 
Atman,  in  the  form  of  a  man.  It  looked  around  and 
saw  nothing  different  to  itself.  Then  it  cried  out  once, 
It  is  L'  That  is  how  the  word  '  I '  came  to  be.  That 
is  why  even  at  the  present  day,  if  any  one  is  called,  he 
answers,  'It  is  I,'  and  then  recalls  his  other  name,  the 
one  he  bears." — (Brihadaranyata-Upanishad.) 

Many  disputations  about  principles  in  psychology  arise 
from  individual  characterological  differences  in  the  dis- 
putants. Thus,  in  the  mode  that  I  have  already  suggested, 
charactero)ogy  might  play  an  important  part.  When  one 
person  thinks  to  have  discovered  this,  the  other  that,  by 
introspection,  characterology  would  have  to  show  why  the 
results  in  the  one  case  should  differ  from  those  in  the  other, 
or,  at  least,  to  point  out  in  what  other  respects  the  persons  in 
question  were  unlike.  I  see  no  other  possible  way  of  clear- 
ing up  the  disputed  points  of  psychology.  Psychology  is  a 
science  of  experiences,  and,  therefore,  it  must  proceed  from 
the  individual  to  the  general,  and  not,  as  in  the  supra-indi- 
vidualistic laws  of  logic  and  ethics,  proceed  from  the  uni- 
versal to  the  individual  case.  There  is  no  such  thing  as  an 
empirical  general  psychology  ;  and  it  would  be  a  mistake 
to  approach  such  without  having  fully  reckoned  with 
differential  psychology. 

It  is  a  great  pity  that  psychology  has  been  placed  between 
philosophy  and  the  analysis  of  perceptions.  From  which- 
ever side  psychologists  approached  the  subject,  they  have 
always  been  assured  of  the  general  validity  of  their  results. 


1 64  SEX  AND  CHARACTER 

Perhaps  even  so  fundamental  a  question  as  to  whether  or 
no  perception  itself  implies  an  actual  and  spontaneous  act 
of  consciousness  cannot  be  solved  without  a  consideration 
of  characterological  differences. 

The  purpose  of  this  work  is  to  apply  characterology  to 
the  solution  of  a  few  of  these  doubtful  matters,  with  special 
reference  to  the  distinctions  between  the  sexes.  The  different 
conceptions  of  the  I-problem,  however,  depend  not  so  much 
on  differences  of  sex  as  on  differences  in  giftedness.  The 
dispute  between  Hume  and  Kant  receives  its  characterolo- 
gical explanation  much  in  the  same  way  as  if  1  were  to  dis- 
tinguish two  men  in  so  far  as  the  one  held  in  the  highest 
esteem  the  works  of  Makart  and  Gounod,  the  other  those 
of  Rembrandt  and  Beethoven.  I  would  simply  distinguish 
the  two  by  their  giftedness.  So  also  the  judgments  about 
the  "  I  "  must  be  very  different  in  the  cases  of  differently 
gifted  men.  There  have  been  no  truly  great  men  who  were 
not  persuaded  of  the  existence  of  the  "  I  " ;  a  man  who 
denies  it  cannot  be  a  great  man. 

In  the  course  of  the  following  pages  this  proposition  will 
be  taken  as  absolutely  binding,  and  will  be  used  really  as  a 
means  of  valuing  genius. 

There  has  been  no  famous  man  who,  at  least  some  time 
in  the  course  of  his  life,  and  generally  earlier  in  proportion 
to  his  greatness,  has  not  had  a  moment  in  which  he  was 
absolutely  convinced  of  the  possession  of  an  ego  in  the 
highest  sense. 

Let  us  compare  the  following  utterances  of  three  very 
great  geniuses. 

Jean  Paul  relates  in  his  autobiographical  sketch,  "  Truths 
from  my  own  Life  "  : 

**  I  can  never  forget  a  circumstance  which,  so  far,  has 
been  related  by  no  one — the  birth  of  my  own  self-conscious- 
ness, the  time  and  place  of  which  I  can  tell.  One  morning 
I  was  standing,  as  a  very  young  child,  at  the  front  door,  and 
looking  towards  the  wood-shed  I  suddenly  saw,  all  at  once, 
my  inner  likeness.  '  I '  am  '  I'  flashed  like  lightning  from 
the  skies  across  me,  and  since  then  has  remained.     I  saw 


THE  "I"  PROBLEM  AND  GENIUS       165 

myself  then  for  the  first  time  and  for  ever.  This  cannot  be 
explained  as  a  confusion  of  memory,  for  no  alien  narrative 
could  have  blended  itself  with  this  sacred  event,  preserved 
permanently  in  my  memory  by  its  vividness  and  novelty." 

Novalis,  in  his  "  Miscellaneous  Fragments,"  refers  to  an 
identical  experience  : 

"This  factor  every  one  must  experience  for  himself.  It 
is  a  factor  of  the  higher  order,  and  reveals  itself  only  to 
higher  men  ;  but  men  should  strive  to  induce  it  in  them- 
selves. Philosophy  is  the  exercise  of  this  factor,  it  is  a 
true  self-revelation,  the  stimulation  of  the  real  ego  by  the 
ideal  ego.  It  is  the  foundation  of  all  other  revelations  ; 
the  resolution  to  philosophise  is  a  challenge  to  the  actual 
ego,  to  become  conscious  of  itself,  to  grow  and  to  become 
a  soul." 

^Schelling  discusses  the  same  phenomenon  in  his  "Philoso- 
phical Letters  upon  Dogmatism  and  Criticism,"  a  little 
known  early  work,  in  which  occurs  the  following  beautiful 
words : 

"  In  all  of  us  there  dwells  a  secret  marvellous  power  of 
freeing  ourselves  from  the  changes  of  time,  of  withdrawing  to 
our  secret  selves  away  from  external  things,  and  of  so  discover- 
ing to  ourselves  the  eternal  in  us  in  the  form  of  unchange- 
ability.  This  presentation  of  ourselves  to  ourselves  is  the  most 
truly  personal  experience  upon  which  depends  everything 
that  we  know  of  the  supra-sensual  world.  This  presenta- 
tion shows  us  for  the  first  time  what  real  existence  is,  whilst 
all  else  only  appears  to  be.  It  differs  from  every  presenta- 
tion of  the  sense  in  its  perfect  freedom,  whilst  all  other 
presentations  are  bound,  being  overweighted  by  the  burden 
of  the  object.  Still  there  exists  for  those  who  have  not 
this  perfect  freedom  of  the  inner  sense  some  approach  to 
it,  experiences  approaching  it  from  which  they  may  gain 
some  faint  idea  of  it.  .  .  .  )This  intellectual  presentation 
occurs  when  we  cease  to  be  our  own  object,  when,  with- 
drawing into  ourselves,  the  perceiving  self  merges  in  the 
self-perceived.  At  that  moment  we  annihilate  time  and 
duration  of  time;  we  are  no  longer  in  time,  but  time,  or 


i66  SEX  AND  CHARACTER 

rather  eternity  itself,  is  in  us.     The  external  world  is  no 
longer  an  object  for  us,  but  is  lost  in  us." 

The  positivist  will  perhaps  only  laugh  at  the  self-deceived 
deceiver,  the  philosopher  who  asserts  that  he  has  had  such 
experiences.  Well,  it  is  not  easy  to  prevent  it.  It  is  also 
unnecessary.  But  I  am  by  no  means  of  the  opinion  that 
this  "  factor  of  a  higher  order  "  plays  the  same  part  in  all 
men  of  genius  of  a  mystical  identity  of  subject  and  object 
as  Schelling  describes  it. 

Whether  there  are  undivided  experiences  in  which  the 
dualism  of  actual  life  is  overcome,  as  is  indicated  by  Plotin 
and  the  Indian  Mahatmas,  or  whether  this  is  only  the 
highest  intensification  of  experience,  but  in  principle  similar 
to  all  others — does  not  signify  here,  the  coincidence  of  sub- 
ject and  object,  of  time  and  eternity,  the  representing  of 
God  through  living  men,  will  neither  be  demonstrated  as 
possible  nor  denied  as  impossible.  The  experiencing  of 
one's  own  "  I  "  is  not  to  be  begun  by  theoretical  knowledge, 
and  no  one  has  ever,  so  far,  tried  to  put  it  in  the  position  of 
a  systematic  philosophy.  I  shall,  therefore,  not  call  this 
factor  of  a  higher  order,  which  manifests  itself  in  some  men 
in  one  way  and  in  other  men  in  another  way,  an  essential 
manifestation  of  the  true  ego,  but  only  a  phase  of  it. 
'(^Every  great  man  knows  this  phase  of  the  ego.  He  may 
become  conscious  of  it  first  through  the  love  of  a  woman, 
for  the  great  man  loves  more  intensely  than  the  ordinary 
man  ;  or  it  may  be  from  the  contrast  given  by  a  sense  of 
guilt  or  the  knowledge  of  having  failed  ;  these,  too,  the 
great  man  feels  more  intensely  than  smaller-minded  people. 
It  may  lead  him  to  a  sense  of  unity  with  the  all,  to  the 
seeing  of  all  things  in  God,  or,  and  this  is  more  likely,  it 
may  reveal  to  him  the  frightful  dualism  of  nature  and  spirit 
in  the  universe,  and  produce  in  him  the  need,  the  craving, 
for  a  solution  of  it,  for  the  secret  inner  wonder)  But  always 
it  leads  the  great  man  to  the  beginning  of  a  presentation  of 
the  world  for  himself  and  by  himself,  without  the  help  of 
the  thought  of  others. 

This  intuitive  vision  of  the  world  is  not  a  great  synthesis 


THE  "I"  PROBLEM  AND  GENIUS        167 

elaborated  at  his  writing-table  in  his  library  from  all  the 
books  that  have  been  written  ;  it  is  something  that  has  been 
experienced,  and  as  a  whole  it  is  clear  and  intelligible, 
although  details  may  still  be  obscure  and  contradictory. 
The  excitation  of  the  ego  is  the  only  source  of  this  intuitive 
vision  of  the  world  as  a  whole  in  the  case  of  the  artist  as  in 
that  of  the  philosopher.  And,  however  different  they  may 
be,  if  they  are  really  intuitive  visions  of  the  cosmos,  they 
have  this  in  common,  something  that  comes  only  from  the 
excitation  of  the  ego,  the  faith  that  every  great  man  pos-> 
sesses,  the  conviction  of  his  possession  of  an  "  I  "  or  soul, 
which  is  solitary  in  the  universe,  which  faces  the  universe 
and  comprehends  it.- 

From  the  time  of  this  first  excitation  of  his  ego,  the  great 
man,  in  spite  of  lapses  due  to  the  most  terrible  feeling,  the 
feeling  of  mortality,  will  live  in  and  by  his  soul. 
,(And  it  is  for  this  reason,  as  well  as  from  the  sense  of  his 
creative  powers,  that  the  great  man  has  so  intense  a  self- 
consciousness.  Nothing  can  be  more  unintelligent  than  to 
talk  of  the  modesty  of  great  men,  of  their  inability  to  recog- 
nise what  is  within  them.  There  is  no  great  man  who  does 
not  well  know  how  far  he  differs  from  others  (except  during 
these  periodical  fits  of  depression  to  which  I  have  already 
alluded).  Every  great  man  feels  himself  to  be  great  as  soon 
as  he  has  created  something  ;  his  vanity  and  ambition  are, 
in  fact,  always  so  great  that  he  over-estimates  himself. 
Schopenhauer  believed  himself  to  be  greater  than  Kant. 
Nietzsche  declared  that  "  Thus  spake  Zarathustra  "  was  the 
greatest  book  in  the  world. 

There  is,  however,  a  side  of  truth  in  the  assertion  that 
great  men  are  m^,dest.  They  are  never  arrogant.  Arro- 
gance and  self-realisation  are  contradictories,  and  should 
never  be  confui^ed  although  this  is  often  done.  A  man  has 
just  as  much  arrogance  as  he  lacks  of  self-realisation,  and 
uses  it  to  increase  his  own  self-consciousness  by  artificially 
lowering  his  estimation  of  others.  Of  course  the  fore- 
going holds  true  only  of  what  may  be  called  physiological, 
unconscious  arrogance  ;  the  great  man  must  occasionally 


1 68  SEX  AND  CHARACTER 

comport  himself  with  what  seems  rudeness  to  contemptible 
persons. 

^All  great  men,  then,  have  a  conviction,  really  independent 
of  external  proof,  that  they  have  a  soul.  The  absurd  fear 
must  be  laid  aside  that  the  soul  is  a  hyperempirical  reality 
and  that  belief  in  it  leads  us  to  the  position  of  the  the- 
ologists.  Belief  in  a  soul  is  anything  rather  than  a  supersti- 
tion and  is  no  mere  handmaid  of  religious  systems.  Artists 
speak  of  their  souls  although  they  have  not  studied 
philosophy  or  theology  ;  atheists  like  Shelley  use  the  ex- 
pression and  know  very  well  what  they  mean  by  it)- 

Others  have  suggested  that  the  "  soul "  is  only  a  beautiful 
empty  word,  which  people  ascribe  to  others  without  having 
felt  its  need  for  themselves.  This  is  like  saying  that  great 
artists  use  symbols  to  express  the  highest  form  of  reality 
without  being  assured  as  to  the  existence  of  that  reality. 
The  mere  empiricist  and  the  pure  physiologist  no  doubt 
will  consider  that  ail  this  is  nonsense,  and  that  Lucretius  is 
the  only  great  poet.  No  doubt  there  has  been  much  misuse 
of  the  word,  but  if  great  artists  speak  of  their  soul  they 
know  what  they  are  about.  Artists,  like  philosophers,  know 
well  when  they  approach  the  greatest  possible  reality,  but 
Hume  had  no  sense  of  this. 

^The  scientific  man  ranks,  as  1  have  already  said,  and  as  I 
shall  presently  prove,  below  the  artist  and  the  philosopher. 
The  two  latter  may  earn  the  title  of  genius  which  must 
always  be  denied  to  the  scientific  man^  Without  any  good 
reason  having  been  assigned  for  it,  it  has  usually  been  the 
case  that  the  voice  of  genius  on  any  particular  problem  is 
listened  to  before  the  voice  of  science.  Is  there  justice  in 
this  preference  ?  Can  the  genius  explain  things  as  to  which 
the  man  of  science,  as  such,  can  say  nothing  ?  Can  he 
peer  into  depths  where  the  man  of  science  is  blind  ? 

The  conception  genius  concludes  universality.  If  theie 
were  an  absolute  genius  (a  convenient  fiction)  there  would 
be  nothing  to  which  he  could  not  have  a  vivid,  intimate, 
and  complete  relation.  Genius,  as  I  have  already  shown, 
would    have    universal    comprehension,   and    through   its 


THE  "  I  "  PROBLEM  AND  GENIUS       169 

perfect  memory  would  be  independent  of  time.  To  com- 
prehend anything  one  must  have  within  one  something 
similar.  <^A  man  notices,  understands,  and  comprehends 
only  those  things  with  which  he  has  some  kinship.  The 
genius  is  the  man  with  the  most  intense,  most  vivid,  most 
conscious,  most  continuous,  and  most  individual  ego.  The 
ego  is  the  central  point,  the  unit  of  comprehension,  the 
synthesis  of  all  manifoldness.) 

(^he  ego  of  the  genius  accordingly  is  simply  itself  universal 
comprehension,  the  centre  of  infinite  space  ;  the  great  man 
contains  the  whole  universe  within  himself  ;  genius  is  the 
living  microcosm/  He  is  not  an  intricate  mosaic,  a  chemical 
combination  of  an  infinite  number  of  elements  ;  the  argu- 
ment m  chap.  iv.  as  to  his  relation  to  other  men  and 
things  must  not  be  taken  in  that  sense  ;  he  is  everything. 
In  him  and  through  him  all  psychical  manifestations  cohere 
and  are  real  experiences,  not  an  elaborate  piece-work,  a 
whole  put  together  from  parts  in  the  fashion  of  science. 
For  the  genius  the  ego  is  the  all,  lives  as  the  all  ;  the  genius 
sees  nature  and  all  existences  as  whole  ;  the  relations  of 
things  flash  on  him  intuitively  ;  he  has  not  to  build  bridges 
of  stones  between  them.  And  so  the  genius  cannot  be  an 
empirical  psychologist  slowly  collecting  details  and  linking 
them  by  associations  ;  he  cannot  be  a  physicist,  envisaging 
the  world  as  a  compound  of  atoms  and  molecules. 

L  It  is  absolutely  from  his  vision  of  the  whole,  in  which  the  \ 
genius  always  lives,  that  he  gets  his  sense  of  the  parts.     He 
values  everything  within  him  or  without  him  by  the  standard 
of  this  vision,  a  vision  that  for  him  is  no  function  of  time, ; 
but  a  part  of  eternity.     And  so  the  man  of  genius  is  the 
profound   man,  and  profound  only  in  proportion   to   his  \ 
genius.     That  is  why  his  views  are  more  valuable  than  those 
of  all  others.     He  constructs  from  everything  his  ego  that 
holds  the  universe,  whilst  others  never  reach  a  full  con- 
sciousness of  this  inner  self,  and  so,  for  him,  all  things  have 
significance,  all  thmgs  are  symbolical.)  For  him  breathing  is 
something   more   than   the    coming   and    going   of    gases 
through  the  walls  of  the  capillaries ;  the  blue  of  the  sky  is 


lyo  SEX  AND  CHARACTER 

more  than  the  partial  polarisation  of  diffused  and  reflected 
light ;  snakes  are  not  merely  reptiles  that  have  lost  limbs. 
If  it  were  possible  for  one  single  man  to  have  achieved  all 
the  scientific  discoveries  that  have  ever  been  made,  if  every- 
thing that  has  been  done  by  the  following  :  Archimedes 
and  Lagrange,  Johannes  Müller  and  Karl  Ernst  von  Baer, 
Newton  and  Laplace,  Konrad  Sprengel  and  Cuvier,  Thucy- 
dides  and  Niebuhr,  Friedrich  August  Wolf  and  Franz  Bopp, 
and  by  many  more  famous  men  of  science,  could  have  been 
achieved  by  one  man  in  the  short  span  of  human  life,  he 
would  still  not  be  entitled  to  the  denomination  of  genius, 
for  none  of  these  have  pierced  the  depths.  The  scientist 
takes  phenomena  for  what  they  obviously  are  ;  the  great 
man  or  the  genius  for  what  they  signify.  Sea  and  moun- 
tain, light  and  darkness,  spring  and  autumn,  cypress  and 
palm,  dove  and  swan  are  symbols  to  him,  he  not  only  thinks 
that  there  is,  but  he  recognises  in  them  something  deeper. 
The  ride  of  the  Valkyrie  is  not  produced  by  atmospheric 
pressure  and  the  magic  fire  is  not  the  outcome  of  a  process 
of  oxidation. 

jJ^And  all  this  is  possible  for  him  because  the  outer  world 
is  as  full  and  strongly  connected  as  the  inner  in  him,  the 
external  world  in  fact  seems  to  be  only  a  special  aspect  of 
his  inner  life  ;  the  universe  and  the  ego  have  become  one  in 
him,  and  he  is  not  obliged  to  set  his  experience  together 
piece  by  piece  according  to  rule.^  The  greatest  poly- 
historian,  on  the  contrary,  does  nothmg  but  add  branch  to 
branch  and  yet  creates  no  completed  structure.  That  is 
another  reason  why  the  great  scientist  is  lower  than  the 
great  artist,  the  great  philosopher.  The  infinity  of  the 
universe  is  responded  to  in  the  genius  by  a  true  sense  of 
infinity  in  his  own  breast  ;  he  holds  chaos  and  cosmos,  all 
details  and  all  totality,  all  plurality,  and  all  singularity  in  him- 
self. Although  these  remarks  apply  more  to  genius  than  to 
the  nature  of  the  productions  of  genius,  although  the  occur- 
ence of  artistic  ecstasy,  philosophic  conceptions,  religious 
fervour  remain  as  puzzling  as  ever,  if  merely  the  conditions, 
not  the  actual  process  of  a  really  great  achievement  has 


THE  "I"  PROBLEM  AND  GENIUS        171 

been  made  clearer,  yet  this  is  nevertheless  to  be  the  final 
definition  of  genius  : 

A  man  may  be  called  a  genius  when  he  lives  in  conscious 
connection  with  the  whole  universe.  It  is  only  then  that 
the  genius  becomes  the  really  divine  spark  in  mankind. 

The  great  idea  oi  the  soul  of  man  as  the  microcosm,  the 
most  important  discovery  of  the  philosophy  of  the 
Renaissance — although  traces  of  the  idea  are  to  be  found  in 
Plato  and  Aristotle — appears  to  be  quite  disregarded  by 
modern  thinkers  since  the  death  of  Leibnitz.  It  has  hitherto 
been  held  as  only  holding  good  for  genius,  as  the 
prerogative  of  those  masters  of  men. 

But  the  incongruity  is  only  apparent.  All  mankind  have 
some  of  the  quality  of  genius,  and  no  man  has  it  entirely. 
Genius  is  a  condition  to  which  one  man  draws  close  whilst 
another  is  further  away,  which  is  attained  by  some  in  early 
days,  but  with  others  only  at  the  end  of  life. 

The  man  to  whom  we  have  accorded  the  possession  of 
genius,  is  only  he  who  has  begun  to  see,  and  to  open  the 
eyes  of  others.  That  they  then  can  see  with  their  own  eyes 
proves  that  they  were  only  standing  before  the  door. 

Even  the  ordinary  man,  even  as  such,  can  stand  in  an 
indirect  relationship  to  everything  :  his  idea  of  the  "  whole  " 
is  only  a  glimpse,  he  does  not  succeed  in  identifying  himself 
with  it.  But  he  is  not  without  the  possibility  of  following 
this  identification  in  another,  and  so  attaining  a  composite 
image.  Through  some  vision  of  the  world  he  can  bind 
himself  to  the  universal,  and  by  diligent  cultivation  he  can 
make  each  detail  a  part  of  himself.  Nothing  is  quite 
strange  to  him,  and  in  all  a  band  of  sympathy  exists  between 
him  and  the  things  of  the  world.  It  is  not  so  with  plants 
or  animals.  They  are  limited,  they  do  not  know  the  whole, 
but  only  one  element  ;  they  do  not  populate  the  whole 
earth,  and  where  they  are  widely  dispersed  it  is  in  the 
service  of  man,  who  has  allotted  to  them  everywhere  the 
same  task.  They  may  have  a  relation  to  the  sun  or  to  the 
moon,  but  they  certainly  are  wanting  in  respect  of  the 
"  starry  vault "   and    "  the    moral   law."     For    the    latter 


172  SEX  AND  CHARACTER 

originates  in  the  soul  of  man,  in  which  is  hidden  all 
totality,  which  can  see  everything  because  it  is  universal 
itself  :  the  starry  heavens  and  the  moral  law  are  fundamen- 
tally one  and  the  same.  The  universalism  of  the  categorical 
imperative  is  the  universalism  of  the  universe. 

The  infinity  of  the  universe  is  only  the  "thought-picture" 
of  the  infinity  of  the  moral  volition. 

This  was  taught,  the  microcosm  in  man,  by  Empedocles, 
that  mighty  magician. 

Fa/p  /Jiv  yap  yatav  OTrwTrajntv,  vSari  S'uow/o, 
AlBepi  S'aWepa  Slov,  drap  irvpX  irvp  äihrtXov, 
^Topyy  ^£  (TTopyriv,  vaixog  Se  rt  i/ti^d  Aoy/otj». 

And  Plotinus  ; 

V  Xo.p  av  TTiiiiroTt  nosv 
otpSaXfibg  rjXiov  riXiotiSng  firj  Ytyij/rjjuevo^, 

which  Goethe  imitated  in  the  famous  verse : 

"  War'  nicht  das  Auge  sonnenhaft, 
Die  Sonne  könnt'  es  nie  erblicken  ; 
Lag'  nicht  in  uns  des  Gottes  eig'ne  Kraft, 
Wie  könnt  uns  Göttliches  entzücken  ?  " 

Man  is  the  only  creature,  he  is  the  creature  in  Nature, 
that  has  in  himself  a  relation  to  every  thing. 

He  to  whom  this  relationship  brings  understanding  and 
the  most  complete  consciousness,  not  to  many  things  or  to 
few  things,  but  to  all  things,  the  man  who  of  his  own 
individuality  has  thought  out  everything,  is  called  a  genius. 
He  in  whom  the  possibility  of  this  is  present,  in  whom  an 
interest  in  everything  could  be  aroused,  yet  who  only,  of 
his  own  accord,  concerns  himself  with  a  few,  we  call  merely 
a  man. 

The  theory  of  Leibnitz,  which  is  seldom  rightly  understood, 
that  the  lower  monads  are  a  mirror  of  the  world  without 
being  conscious  of  this  capacity  of  theirs,  expresses  the  same 
idea.  The  man  of  genius  lives  in  a  state  of  complete  under- 
standing, an  understanding  of  the  whole  ;  the  whole  world 


THE  "I"  PROBLEM  AND  GENIUS       173 

is  also  in  ordinary  men,  but  not  in  a  condition  that  can 
become  creative.  The  one  Hves  in  conscious  active  relation 
with  the  whole,  the  other  in  an  unconscious  relation ;  the 
man  of  genius  is  the  actual,  the  common  man  the  potential, 
microcosm.  ^J'he  genius  is  the  complete  man  ;  the  manhood 
that  is  latent  in  all  men  is  in  him  fully  developed. 

Man  himself  is  the  All,  and  so  unlike  a  mere  part, 
dependent  on  other  parts  ;  he  is  not  assigned  a  definite 
place  in  a  system  of  natural  laws,  but  he  himself  is  the 
meaning  of  the  law  and  is  therefore  free,  just  as  the  world 
whole  being  itself,  the  All  does  not  condition  itself  but  is 
unconditionedN  The  man  of  genius  is  he  who  forgets  nothing 
because  he  does  not  forget  himself,  and  because  forgetting, 
being  a  functional  subjection  to  time,  is  neither  free  nor 
ethical.  He  is  not  brought  forward  on  the  wave  of  a 
historical  movement  as  its  child,  to  be  swallowed  up  by  the 
next  wave,  because  all,  all  the  past  and  all  the  future  is 
contained  in  his  inward  vision.  He  it  is  whose  conscious- 
ness of  immortality  is  most  strong  because  the  fear  of  death 
has  no  terror  for  him.  He  it  is  who  lives  in  the  most 
sympathetic  relation  to  symbols  and  values  because  he  weighs 
and  interprets  by  these  all  that  it  is  within  him  and  ail 
that  is  outside  him.  We  is  the  freest  and  the  wisest  and  the 
most  moral  of  men,  and  for  these  reasons  he  suffers  most  of 
all  from  what  is  still  unconscious,  what  is  chaos,  what  is 
fatality  within  him.S 

How  does  the  morality  of  great  men  reveal  itself  in  their 
relations  to  other  men  ?  This,  according  to  the  popular 
view,  is  the  only  form  which  morality  can  assume,  apart 
from  contraventions  of  the  penal  code.  And  certainly  in 
this  respect,  great  men  have  displayed  the  most  dubious 
qualities.  Have  they  not  laid  themselves  open  to  accusa- 
tions of  base  ingratitude,  extreme  harshness,  and  much 
worse  faults  ? 

It  is  certainly  true  that  the  greater  an  artist  or  philospher 
may  be,  the  more  ruthless  he  will  be  in  keeping  faith  with 
himself,  in  this  very  way  often  disappointing  the  expectations 
of  those  with  whom  he  comes  in  contact  in  cvery-day  life  ; 


174  SEX  AND  CHARACTER 

these  cannot  follow  his  higher  flights  and  so  try  to  bind  the 
eagle  to  earth  (Goethe  and  Lavater)  and  in  this  way  many 
great  men  have  been  branded  as  immoral. 

Goethe,  fortunately  for  himself,  preserved  a  silence  about 
himself  so  complete  that  modern  people  who  think  that  they 
understand  him  completely  as  the  light-Hving  Olympian, 
only  know  a  few  specks  of  him  taken  from  his  marvellous 
delineation  of  Faust ;  we  may  be  certain,  none  the  less,  that 
he  judged  himself  severely,  and  suffered  in  full  measure  for 
the  guilt  he  found  in  himself.  And  when  an  envious 
Nörgler,  who  never  grasped  Schopenhauer's  doctrine  of 
detachment  and  the  meaning  of  his  Nirwana,  throws  the 
reproach  at  the  latter  that  he  got  the  last  value  out  of  his 
property,  such  a  mean  yelping  requires  no  answer. 

/The  statement  that  a  great  man  is  most  moral  towards 
himself  stands  on  sure  ground ;  he  will  not  allow  alien 
views  to  be  imposed  on  him,  so  obscuring  the  judgment  of 
his  own  ego  ;  he  will  not  passively  accept  the  interpretation 
of  another,  of  an  alien  ego,  quite  different  from  his  own, 
and  if  ever  he  has  allowed  himself  to  be  influenced,  the 
thought  will  always  be  painful  to  him.  A  conscious  lie  that  he 
has  told  will  harass  him  throughout  his  life,  and  he  will  be 
unable  to  shake  off  the  memory  in  Dionysian  fashiory  ^ut 
men  of  genius  will  suffer  most  when  they  become  aware 
afterwards  that  they  have  unconsciously  helped  to  spread  a 
lie  in  their  talk  or  conduct  with  others.  Other  men,  who  do 
not  possess  this  organic  thirst  for  truth,  are  always  deeply 
involved  in  lies  and  errors,  and  so  do  not  understand  the 
bitter  revolt  of  great  men  against  the  "  lies  of  life.") 

The  great  man,  he  who  stands  high,  he  in  whom  the 
ego,  unconditioned  by  time,  is  dominant,  seeks  to  maintain 
his  own  value  in  the  presence  of  his  intelligible  ego  by  his 
intellectual  and  moral  conscience.  His  pride  is  towards 
himself ;  there  is  the  desire  in  him  to  impress  his  own  self 
by  his  thoughts,  actions,  and  creations.  This  pride  is  the 
pride  peculiar  to  genius,  possessing  its  own  standard  of 
value,  and  it  is  independent  of  the  judgment  of  others, 
since  it  possesses  in  itself  a   higher  tribunal.      Soft  and 


THE  **!"  PROBLEM  AND  GENIUS       175 

ascetic  natures  (Pascal  is  an  example)  sometimes  suffer 
from  this  self-pride,  and  yet  try  in  vain  to  shake  it  off. 
This  self-pride  will  always  be  associated  with  pride  before 
others,  but  the  two  forms  are  really  in  perpetual  conflict. 

Can  it  be  said  that  this  strong  adaptation  to  duty  towards 
oneself  prejudices  the  sense  of  duty  towards  one's  neigh- 
bours ?  Do  not  the  two  stand  as  alternatives,  so  that  he 
who  always  keeps  faith  with  himself  must  break  it  with 
others  ?  By  no  means.  As  there  is  only  one  truth,  so 
there  can  be  only  one  desire  for  truth — what  Carlyle  called 
smcerity — that  a  man  has  or  has  not  with  regard  both  to 
himself  and  to  the  world  ;  (it  is  never  one  of  two,  a  view  of 
the  world  differing  from  a  view  of  oneself,  a  self-study  with- 
out a  world-study  ;  there  is  only  one  duty  and  only  one 
morality.  Man  acts  either  morally  or  immorally,  and  if 
he  is  moral  towards  himself  he  is  moral  towards  other^ 

There  are  few  regions  of  thought,  however,  so  full  of 
false  ideas,  as  the  conception  of  moral  duty  towards  one's 
neighbours  and  how  it  is  to  be  fulfilled.  Leaving  out 
of  consideration,  for  the  moment,  the  theoretical  systems 
of  morality  which  are  based  on  the  maintenance  of 
human  society,  and  which  attach  less  importance  to  the 
concrete  feelings  and  motives  at  the  moment  of  action  than 
to  the  effect  on  the  general  system  of  morality,  we  come 
at  once  to  the  popular  idea  which  defines  the  morality  of 
a  man  by  his  "goodness,"  the  degree  to  which  his  com- 
passionate disposition  is  developed.  From  the  philosophi- 
cal point  of  view,  Hutcheson,  Hume,  and  Smith  saw  in 
sympathy  the  nature  and  source  of  all  ethical  conduct,  and 
this  view  received  a  very  strong  support  from  Schopen- 
hauer's sympathetic  morality.  Schopenhauer's  *'  Essay  on 
the  Foundations  of  Morality"  shows  in  its  motto  "It  is 
easy  to  preach  morality,  difficult  to  find  a  basis  for  it,"  the 
fundamental  error  of  the  sympathetic  ethics  which  always 
fails  to  recognise  that  the  science  of  ethics  is  not  merely 
an  explanation  and  description  of  conduct,  but  a  search 
for  a  guide  to  it.  Whoever  will  be  at  the  pains  diligently 
to  listen  to  the  inner  voice  of  man,  in  order  to  establish 


176  SEX  AND  CHARACTER 

what  he  ought  to  do,  will  certainly  reject  every  system  of 
ethics,  the  aim  of  which  is  to  be  a  doctrine  of  the  require- 
ments which  man  has  invented  for  himself  and  others 
instead  of  being  a  relation  of  what  he  actually  does  in 
furthering  these  requirements  or  in  stifling  them.  The 
object  of  all  moral  science  is  not  what  is  happening  but 
what  ought  to  happen. 

All  attempts  to  explain  ethics  by  psychology  overlook  the 
fact  that  every  psychic  event  in  man  is  appraised  by  man 
himself,  and  the  appraiser  of  the  psychic  event  cannot  be 
a  psychic  event.  This  standard  can  only  be  an  idea,  or 
a  value  which  is  never  fully  realised,  and  which  cannot 
be  altered  by  any  experience  because  it  remains  constant, 
even  if  all  experience  is  in  opposition  to  it.  Moral  conduct 
can  be  only  conduct  controlled  by  an  idea.  And  so  we 
can  choose  only  from  systems  of  morality  which  set  up 
some  idea  or  maxim  for  the  regulation  of  conduct,  and 
there  are  only  two  to  choose  from,  the  ethical  socialism  or 
social  ethics,  founded  by  Bentham  and  Mill,  but  imported 
to  the  Continent  and  diligently  propagated  in  Germany  and 
Norway,  and  ethical  individualism  such  as  is  taught  by 
Christianity  and  German  idealism. 

The  second  failure  of  all  the  systems  of  ethics  founded 
on  sympathy  is  that  they  attempt  to  find  a  foundation  for 
morality,  to  explain  morality,  whilst  the  very  conception  of 
morality  is  that  it  should  be  the  ultimate  standard  of 
human  conduct,  and  so  must  be  inexplicable  and  non- 
derivative,  must  be  its  own  purpose,  and  cannot  be  brought 
into  relation  of  cause  and  effect  with  anything  outside 
itself.  This  attempted  derivation  of  morality  is  simply 
another  aspect  of  the  purely  descriptive,  and  therefore 
necessarily,  relative,  ethics,  and  is  untenable  from  the 
fact  that  however  diligently  the  search  be  made,  it  is 
impossible  to  find  in  the  sphere  of  causes  and  effects  a 
high  aim  that  would  be  applicable  to  every  moral  action. 
The  inspiring  motive  of  an  action  cannot  come  from  any 
nexus  of  cause  and  effect  ;  it  is  much  more  in  the  nature  of 
things  for  cause  and  effect  to  be  linked  with  an  inspiring 


THE  "I"  PROBLEM  AND  GENIUS       177 

moral  aim.  Outside  the  domain  of  first  causes  there  lies  a 
domain  of  moral  aims,  and  this  latter  domain  is  the  inheri- 
tance of  mankind.  The  complete  science  of  existence  is 
a  linking  together  of  first  causes  until  the  first  cause  of  all 
is  reached,  and  a  complete  science  of  "  oughts "  leads  to 
a  union  of  all  in  one  great  aim,  the  culminating  moral 
imperative. 

He  who  rates  sympathy  as  a  positive  moral  factor  has 
treated  as  moral  something  that  is  a  feeling,  not  an  act. 
Sympathy  may  be  an  ethical  phenomenon,  the  expres- 
sion of  something  ethical,  but  it  is  no  more  an  ethical 
act  than  are  the  senses  of  shame  and  pride ;  we 
must  clearly  distinguish  between  an  ethical  act  and  an 
ethical  phenomenon.  Nothing  must  be  considered  an 
ethical  act  that  is  not  a  confirmation  of  the  ethical  idea 
by  action  ;  ethical  phenomena  are  unpremeditated,  involun- 
tary signs  of  a  permanent  tendency  of  the  disposition 
towards  the  moral  idea.  It  is  in  the  struggle  between 
motives  that  the  idea  presses  in  and  seeks  to  make  the 
decision  ;  the  empirical  mixture  of  ethical  and  unethical 
feelings,  sympathy  and  malice,  self-confidence  and  presump- 
tion, gives  no  help  towards  a  conclusion.  Sympathy  is, 
perhaps,  the  surest  sign  of  a  disposition,  but  it  is  not  the 
moral  purpose  inspiring  an  action.  Morality  must  imply 
conscious  knowledge  of  the  moral  purpose  and  of  value  as 
opposed  to  worthlessness.  Socrates  was  right  in  this,  and 
Kant  is  the  only  modern  philosopher  who  has  followed 
him.  Sympathy  is  a  non-logical  sensation,  and  has  no 
claim  to  respect. 

The  question  now  before  us  is  to  consider  how  far  a  man 
can  act  morally  with  regard  to  his  fellow  men. 

It  is  certainly  not  by  unsolicited  help  which  obtrudes 
itself  on  the  solitude  of  another  and  pierces  the  limits  that 
he  has  set  for  himself  ;  not  by  compassion  but  rather  by 
respect.  This  respect  we  owe  only  to  man,  as  Kant 
showed  ;  for  man  is  the  only  creature  in  the  universe  who 
is  a  purpose  to  himself. 

But   how  can  I  show  a  man   my  contempt,  and  how 


178  SEX  AND  CHARACTER 

prove  to  him  my  respect  ?  The  first  by  ignoring  him,  the 
second  by  being  friendly  with  him. 

How  can  I  use  him  as  a  means  to  an  end,  and  how  can 
I  honour  him  by  regarding  him  himself  as  an  end  ?  In  the 
first  case,  by  looking  upon  him  as  a  link  in  the  chain  of 
circumstances  with  which  I  have  to  deal ;  in  the  second,  by 
endeavouring  to  understand  him.  It  is  only  by  interesting 
oneself  in  a  man,  without  exactly  telling  him  so,  by 
thinking  of  him,  by  grasping  his  work,  by  sympathising 
with  his  fate,  and  by  seeking  to  understand  him,  that  one 
can  respect  one's  neighbour.  Only  he  who,  through  his 
own  afflictions,  has  become  unselfish,  who  forgets  small 
wranglings  with  his  fellow  man,  who  can  repress  his  im- 
patience, and  who  endeavours  to  understand  him,  is  really 
disinterested  with  regard  to  his  neighbour  ;  and  he  behaves 
morally  because  he  triumphs  over  the  strongest  enemy  to 
his  understanding  of  his  neighbour — selfishness. 

How  does  the  famous  man  stand  in  this  respect  ?  He 
who  understands  the  most  men,  because  he  is  mostuni- 
versal in  disposition,  and  who  lives  in  the  closest  relation 
to  the  universe  at  large,  who  most  earnestly  desires  to 
understand  its  purpose,  will  be  most  likely  to  act  well 
towards  his  neighbour. 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  no  one  thinks  so  much  or  so  intently 
as  he  about  other  people  (even  although  he  has  only  seen 
them  for  a  moment),  and  no  one  tries  so  hard  to  understand 
them  if  he  does  not  feel  that  he  already  has  them  within 
him  in  all  their  significance.  Inasmuch  as  he  has  a  con- 
tinuous past,  a  complete  ego  of  his  own,  he  can  create  the 
past  which  he  did  not  know  for  others.  He  follows  the 
strongest  bent  of  his  inner  being  if  he  thinks  about  them, 
for  he  seeks  only  to  come  to  the  truth  about  them  by 
understanding  them.  He  sees  that  human  beings  are  all 
members  of  an  intelligible  world,  in  which  there  is  no 
narrow  egoism  or  altruism.  This  is  the  only  explanation 
of  how  it  is  that  great  men  stand  in  vital,  understanding 
relationship,  not  only  with  those  round  about  them,  but 
with  all  the  personalities  of  history  who  have  preceded  them  ; 


THE  "  I  "  PROBLEM  AND  GENIUS       179 

this  is  the  only  reason  why  great  artists  have  grasped  his- 
torical personalities  so  much  better  and  more  intensively 
than  scientific  historians.  There  has  been  no  great  man 
who  has  not  stood  in  a  personal  relationship  to  Napoleon, 
Plato,  or  Mahomet.  It  is  in  this  way  that  he  shows  his 
respect  and  true  reverence  for  those  who  have  lived  before 
him.  When  many  of  those  who  have  been  intimate  with 
artists  feel  aggrieved  when  later  on  they  recognise  them- 
selves in  their  works ;  when  writers  are  reproached  for 
treating  everything  as  copy,  it  is  easy  enough  to  understand 
the  feeling.  But  the  artist  or  author  who  does  not  heed  the 
littlenesses  of  mankind  has  committed  no  crime,  he  has 
simply  employed  his  creative  act  of  understanding  with 
regard  to  them,  by  a  single-minded  representation  and 
reproduction  of  the  world  around  him,  and  there  can  be  no 
higher  relation  between  men  than  this.  The  following 
words  of  Pascal,  which  have  already  been  mentioned,  are 
specially  applicable  here  :  "A  mesure  qu'on  a  plus  d'esprit, 
on  trouve  qu'il  y  a  plus  d'hommes  originaux.  Les  gens  du 
commun  ne  trouvent  pas  de  difference  entre  les  hommes." 
It  follows  from  the  foregoing  that  the  greater  a  man  is  the 
greater  efforts  he  will  make  to  understand  things  that  are 
most  strange  to  him,  whilst  the  ordinary  man  readily  thinks 
that  he  understands  a  thing,  although  it  may  be  something 
he  does  not  at  all  understand,  so  that  he  fails  to  perceive  the 
unfamiliar  spirit  which  is  appealing  to  him  from  some  object 
of  art  or  from  a  philosophy,  and  at  most  attains  a  super- 
ficial relation  to  the  subject,  but  does  not  rise  to  the  inspira- 
tion of  its  creator.  The  great  man  who  attains  to  the  highest 
rungs  of  consciousness  does  not  easily  identify  himself  and 
his  opinion  with  anything  he  reads,  whilst  those  with  a 
lesser  clarity  of  mind  adopt,  and  imagine  that  they  absorb, 
things  that  in  reality  are  very  different.  The  man  of  genius 
is  he  whose  ego  has  acquired  consciousness.  He  is  enabled 
by  it  to  distinguish  the  fact  that  others  are  different,  to 
perceive  the  "  ego  "  of  other  men,  even  when  it  is  not  pro- 
nounced enough  for  them  to  be  conscious  of  it  themselves. 
But  it  is  only  he  who  feels  that  every  other  man  is  also  an 


i8o        '         SEX  AND  CHARACTER 

ego,  a  monad,  an  individual  centre  of  the  universe,  with 
specific  manner  of  feeling  and  thinking  and  a  distinct  past, 
he  alone  is  in  a  position  to  avoid  making  use  of  his  neigh- 
bours as  means  to  an  end,  he,  according  to  the  ethics  of 
Kant,  will  trace,  anticipate,  and  therefore  respect  the  per- 
sonality in  his  companion  (as  part  of  the  intelligible 
universe),  and  will  not  merely  be  scandalised  by  him.  The 
psychological  condition  of  all  practical  altruism,  therefore, 
is  theoretical  individualism. 

Here  lies  the  bridge  between  moral  conduct  towards 
oneself  and  moral  conduct  towards  one's  neighbour,  the 
apparent  want  of  which  in  the  Kantian  philosophy  Schopen- 
hauer unjustly  regarded  as  a  fault,  and  asserted  to  arise 
necessarily  out  of  Kant's  first  principles.  ^ 

It  is  easy  to  give  proofs.  Only  brutalised  criminals  and 
insane  persons  take  absolutely  no  interest  in  their  fellow 
men  ;  they  live  as  if  they  were  alone  in  the  world,  and  the 
presence  of  strangers  has  no  effect  on  them.  But  for  him 
who  possesses  a  self  there  is  a  self  in  his  neighbour,  and 
only  the  man  who  has  lost  the  logical  and  ethical  centre  of 
his  being  behaves  to  a  second  man  as  if  the  latter  were  not 
a  man  and  had  no  personality  of  his  own.  "I "  and  "thou" 
are  complementary  terms.  A  man  soonest  gains  conscious- 
ness of  himself  when  he  is  with  other  men.  This  is  why  a 
man  is  prouder  in  the  presence  of  other  men  than  when  he 
is  alone,  whilst  it  is  in  his  hours  of  solitude  that  his  self- 
confidence  is  damped.  Lastly,  he  who  destroys  himself 
destroys  at  the  same  time  the  whole  universe,  and  he  who 
murders  another  commits  the  greatest  crime  because  he 
murders  himself  in  his  victim.  Absolute  selfishness  is,  in 
practice,  a  horror,  which  should  rather  be  called  nihilism  ; 
if  there  is  no  "  thou,"  there  is  certainly  no  "  I,"  and  that 
would  mean  there  is  nothing. 

There  is  in  the  psychological  disposition  of  the  man  of 
genius  that  which  makes  it  impossible  to  use  other  men  as  a 
means  to  an  end.  And  this  is  it :  he  who  feels  his  own  per- 
sonality, feels  it  also  in  others.  For  him  the  Tat-tvam-asi  is 
no  beautiful  hypothesis,  but  a  reality.    The  highest  indivi- 


THE  "I"  PROBLEM  AND  GENIUS       i8i 

dualism  is  the  highest  universaHsm.  Ernest  Mack  is  in  great 
error  when  he  denies  the  subject,  and  thinks  it  is  only  after 
the  renunciation  of  the  individual  "  I  "  that  an  ethical  rela- 
tion, which  excludes  neglect  of  the  strange  "  I  "  and  over- 
estimation  of  the  individual  "  I,"  may  be  expected.  It  has 
already  been  seen  where  the  want  of  one's  own  I  leads  in 
relation  to  one's  neighbour.  The  I  is  the  fundamental 
ground  of  all  social  morality.  I  should  never  be  able  to 
place  myself,  as  an  actual  psychological  being,  in  an  ethical 
relation  to  a  mere  bundle  of  elements.  It  is  possible  to 
imagine  such  a  relationship  ;  but  it  is  entirely  opposed  to 
practical  conduct ;  because  it  eliminates  the  psychological 
condition  necessary  for  making  the  moral  idea  an  actual 
reality. 

We  are  preparing  for  a  real  ethical  relation  to  our  fellow 
men  when  we  make  them  conscious  that  each  of  them 
possesses  a  higher  self,  a  soul,  and  that  they  must  realise 
the  souls  in  others. 

This  relation  is,  however,  manifested  in  the  most  curious 
manner  in  the  man  of  genius.  No  one  suffers  so  much  as 
he  with  the  people,  and,  therefore,  for  the  people,  with  whom 
he  lives.  For,  in  a  certain  sense,  it  is  certainly  only  "  by 
suffering  "  that  a  man  knows.  If  compassion  is  not  itself 
clear,  abstractly  conceivable  or  visibly  symbolic  knowledge, 
it  is,  at  any  rate,  the  strongest  impulse  for  the  acquisition  of 
knowledge.  It  is  only  by  suffering  that  the  genius  under- 
stands men.  And  the  genius  suffers  most  because  he  suffers 
with  and  in  each  and  all ;  but  he  suffers  most  through  his 
understanding. 

Although  I  tried  to  show  in  an  earlier  chapter  that  genius 
is  the  factor  which  primarily  elevates  man  above  the 
animals,  and  in  connection  with  that  fact  that  it  is  man 
alone  who  has  a  history  (this  being  explained  by  the  pre- 
sence in  all  men  of  some  degree  of  the  quality  of  genius). 
I  must  return  to  that  earlier  side  of  my  argument.  Genius 
involves  the  living  actuality  of  the  intelligible  subject. 
History  manifests  itself  only  as  a  social  thing,  as  the  "  ob- 
jective spirit,"  the  individuals  as  such  playing  no  part  in  it, 


1 82  SEX  AND  CHARACTER 

being,  in  fact,  non-historical.  Here  we  see  the  threads  of 
our  argument  converging.  If  it  be  the  case,  and  I  do  not 
think  that  I  am  wrong,  that  the  timeless,  human  personality 
is  the  necessary  condition  of  every  real  ethical  relation  to 
our  fellow  men,  and  if  individuality  is  the  necessary  pre- 
liminary to  the  collective  spirit,  then  it  is  clear  why  the 
"metaphysical  animal"  and  the  "political  animal,"  the 
possessor  of  genius  and  the  maker  of  history,  are  one 
and  the  same,  are  humanity.  And  the  old  controversy  is 
settled  ;  which  comes  first,  the  individual  or  the  community  ? 
Both  must  be  equal  and  simultaneous. 

I  think  that  I  have  proved  at  every  point  that  genius  is 
simply  the  higher  morality.  The  great  man  is  not  only  the 
truest  to  himself,  the  most  unforgetful,  the  one  to  whom 
errors  and  lies  are  most  hateful  and  intolerable  ;  he  is  also 
the  most  social,  at  the  same  time  the  most  self-contained, 
and  the  most  open  man.  The  genius  is  altogether  a 
higher  form,  not  merely  intellectually,  but  also  morally. 
In  his  own  person,  the  genius  reveals  the  idea  of  man- 
kind. He  represents  what  man  is  ;  he  is  the  subject 
whose  object  is  the  whole  universe  which  he  makes  endure 
,for  all  time. 

Let  there  be  no  mistake.  Consciousness  and  conscious- 
ness alone  is  in  itself  moral  ;  all  unconsciousness  is  immoral, 
and  all  immorality  is  unconscious.  The  **  immoral  genius," 
the  "great  wicked  man,"  is,  therefore,  a  mythical  animal, 
invented  by  great  men  in  certain  moments  of  their  lives  as 
a  possibility,  in  order  (very  much  against  the  will  of  the 
Creator)  to  serve  as  a  bogey  for  nervous  and  timid  natures, 
with  which  they  frighten  themselves  and  other  children. 
No  criminal  who  prided  himself  in  his  deed  would  speak 
like  Hagen  in  the  "  Götterdämmerung  "  over  Siegfried's  dead 
body  :  "  Ha,  ha,  I  have  slain  him  ;  I,  Hagen,  gave  him  his 
death  blow." 

Napoleon  and  Bacon,  who  are  given  as  counter-instances, 
were  intellectually  much  over-rated  or  wrongly  represented. 
And  Nietzsche  is  the  least  reliable  in  these  matters,  when  he 
begins  to  discuss  the  Borgia  type.     The  conception  of  the 


THE  "I"  PROBLEM  AND  GENIUS        183 

diabolical,  of  the  anti-Christ,  of  Ahriman,  of  the  "radical 
evil  in  human  nature,"  is  exceedingly  powerful,  yet  it  con- 
cerns genius  only  inasmuch  as  it  is  the  opposite  of  it.  It 
is  a  fiction,  created  in  the  hours  in  which  great  men  have 
struggled  against  the  evil  in  themselves. 

Universal  comprehension,  full  consciousness,  and  perfect 
timelessness  are  an  ideal  condition,  ideal  even  for  gifted 
men  ;  genius  is  an  innate  imperative,  which  never  becomes 
a  fully  accomplished  fact  in  human  beings.  Hence  it  is 
that  a  man  of  genius  will  be  the  last  man  to  feel  himself  in 
the  position  to  say  of  himself:  "  I  am  a  genius."  Genius 
is,  in  its  essence,  nothing  but  the  full  completion  of  the 
idea  of  a  man,  and,  therefore,  every  man  ought  to  have 
some  quality  of  it,  and  it  should  be  regarded  as  a  possible 
principle  for  every  one. 

Genius  is  the  highest  morality,  and,  therefore,  it  is  every 
one's  duty.  Genius  is  to  be  attained  by  a  supreme  act  of 
the  will,  in  which  the  whole  universe  is  affirmed  in  the 
individual.  Genms  is  something  which  "men  of  genius" 
take  upon  themselves  ;  it  is  the  greatest  exertion  and  the 
greatest  pride,  the  greatest  misery  and  the  greatest  ecstasy 
to  a  man.    <^  man  may  become  a  genius  if  he  wishes  to) 

But  at  once  it  will  certainly  be  said  :  "  Very  many  men 
would  like  very  much  to  be  *  original  geniuses,' "  and  their 
wish  has  no  effect.  But  if  these  men  who  "  would  like  very 
much  "  had  a  livelier  sense  of  what  is  signified  by  their 
wish,  if  they  were  aware  that  genius  is  identical  with  uni- 
versal responsibility — and  until  that  is  grasped  it  will  only 
be  a  wish  and  not  a  determination — it  is  highly  probable 
that  a  very  large  number  of  these  men  would  cease  to  wish 
to  become  geniuses. 

The  reason  why  madness  overtakes  so  many  men  of 
genius — fools  believe  it  comes  from  the  influence  of  Venus, 
or  the  spinal  degeneration  of  neurasthenics — is  that  for 
many  the  burden  becomes  too  heavy,  the  task  of  bearing 
the  whole  world  on  the  shoulders,  like  Atlas,  intolerable 
for  the  smaller,  but  never  for  the  really  mighty  minds. 
But   the   higher  a  man   mounts,  the  greater   may   be  his 


1 84  SEX  AND  CHARACTER 

fall  ;  ^11  genius  is  a  conquering  of  chaos,  mystery,  and 
darkness")  and  if  it  degenerates  and  goes  to  pieces,  the  ruin 
is  greater  in  proportion  to  the  success.  The  genius  which 
runs  to  madness  is  no  longer  genius ;  it  has  chosen  happi- 
ness instead  of  morality.  All  madness  is  the  outcome  of 
the  insupportability  of  suffering  attached  to  all  conscious- 
ness. Sophocles  derived  his  idea  that  a  man  might  wish  to 
become  mad  for  this  reason,  and  lets  Aias,  whose  mind 
finally  gives  way,  give  utterance  to  these  words  : 

ev  Tto  <ppovaiv  \ap  firidlv  nBiorog  ßlog. 

I  shall  conclude  this  chapter  with  the  solemn  words, 
similar  to  the  best  moments  of  Kant's  style,  of  Johann  Pico 
von  Mirandola,  to  whom  I  may  bring  some  measure  of 
recognition.  In  his  address  **  on  the  dignity  of  man  "  the 
Supreme  Being  addresses  the  following  words  to  man  : 

"  Nee  certam  sedem,  nee  propriam  faciem,  nee  munus 
ullum  peculiare  tibi  dedimus,  O  Adam  :  ut  quam  sedem, 
quam  faciem,  quae  munera  tute  optaveris,  ea  pro  vote,  pro 
tua  sententia,  habeas  et  possideas.  Definita  caeteris  natura 
intra  praescriptas  a  nobis  leges  coercetur  ;  tu  nuUis  an- 
gustiis  coercitus,  pro  tuo  arbitrio,  in  cuius  manu  te  posui, 
tibi  illam  praefinies.  Medium  te  mundi  posui,  ut  circum- 
spiceres  inde  commodius  quicquid  est  in  mundo.  Nee  te 
caelestem,  neque  terrenum,  neque  mortalem,  neque  im- 
mortalem  fecimus,  ut  tui  ipsius  quasi  arbitrarius  honorari- 
usque  plastes  et  fictor  in  quam  malueris  tute  formam 
effingas.  Poteris  in  inferiora  quae  sunt  bruta  degenerare, 
poteris  in  superiora  quae  sunt  divina,  ex  tui  animi  sententia 
regenerari. 

O  summam  Dei  Patris  liberalitatem,  summam  et  admir- 
andam  hominis  felicitatem  :  cui  datum  id  habere  quod 
optai,  id  esse  quod  v^lit.  Bruta  simul  atque  nascuntur 
id  secum  afierunt  e  bulga  matris,  quod  possessura  sunt. 
Supremi  spiritus  aut  ab  initio  aut  paulo  mox  id  fuerunt, 
quod  sunt  tuturi  in  perpetuas  aeternitates.  Nascenti  homini 
omniferaria  semina  et  otnnigenae  vitae  germina  indidit  Pater ; 
quae  quisque   excoluerit,   ilia  adolescent   et  fructus    suos 


THE  "I"  PROBLEM  AND  GENIUS       185 

ferent  in  illo:  si  vegetalia,planta  fiet,  si  sensualia,  obbrutescet, 
si  rationalia,  caeleste  evadet  animal,  si  intellectualia,  angelus 
erit  et  Dei  filius.  Et  si  nulla  creaturarum,  sorte  contentus  in 
unitatis  centrum  suae  se  receperit,  unus  cum  Deo  Spiritus  f actus f 
in  soUtaria  Patris  caligine  qui  est  super  omnia  constitutus 
omnibus  antestahit. 


CHAPTER   IX 

MALE  AND  FEMALE  PSYCHOLOGY 

It  is  now  time  to  return  to  the  actual  subject  of  this  inves- 
tigation in  order  to  see  how  far  its  explanation  has  been 
helped  by  the  lengthy  digressions,  which  must  often  have 
seemed  wide  of  the  mark. 

The  consequences  of  the  fundamental  principles  that  have 
been  developed  are  of  such  radical  importance  to  the  psycho- 
logy of  the  sexes  that,  even  if  the  former  deductions  have  been 
assented  to,  the  present  conclusions  may  find  no  acceptance. 
This  is  not  the  place  to  analyse  such  a  possibility  ;  but  in 
order  to  protect  the  theory  I  am  now  going  to  set  up,  from 
all  objections,  I  shall  fully  substantiate  it  in  the  fullest  possible 
manner  by  convincing  arguments. 

Shortly  speaking  the  matter  stands  as  follows :  I  have 
shown  that  logical  and  ethical  phenomena  come  together  in 
the  conception  of  truth  as  the  ultimate  good,  and  posit  the 
existence  of  an  intelligible  ego  or  a  soul,  as  a  form  of  being 
of  the  highest  super-empirical  reality.  In  such  a  being  as 
the  absolute  female  there  are  no  logical  and  ethical  pheno- 
mena, and,  therefore,  the  ground  for  the  assumption  of  a 
soul  is  absent.  The  absolute  female  knows  neither  the 
logical  nor  the  moral  imperative,  and  the  words  law  and 
duty,  duty  towards  herself,  are  words  which  are  least 
familiar  to  her.  The  inference  that  she  is  wanting  in  super- 
sensual  personality  is  fully  justified.  -The  absolute  female 
has  no  egoy 

In  a  certain  sense  this  is  an  end  of  the  investigation,  a 
final  conclusion  to  which  all  analysis  of  the  female  leads. 
And  although  this  conclusion,  put  thus   concisely,  seems 


MALE  AND  FEMALE  PSYCHOLOGY      187 

harsh   and  intolerant,  paradoxical  and   too  abrupt   in    its 

novelty,  it  must  be  remembered  that  the  author  is  not  the 

first  who  has  taken  such  a  view  ;  he  is  more  in  the  position 

of  one  who  has  discovered  the  philosophical  grounds  for  an 

opinion  of  long  standing. 

^he  Chinese   from   time  immemorial  have   denied   that 

women  possess  a   personal  soul.     If  a   Chinaman  is  asked 

how  many  children  he  has,  he   counts  only  the  boys,  and 

will  say  none  if  he  has  only  daughters.     Mahomet  excluded 

women  from  Paradise   for   the   same  reason,  and  on  this 

view  depends  the  degraded  position  of  women  in  Oriental 

countries.N 

Amongst  the  philosophers,  the  opinions  of  Aristotle  must 
first  be  considered.  He  held  that  in  procreation  the  male 
principle  was  the  formative  active  agent,  the  "logos,"  whilst 
the  female  was  the  passive  material.  When  we  remember 
that  Aristotle  uses  the  word  "  soul  "  for  the  active,  forma- 
tive, causative  principle,  it  is  plain  that  his  idea  was  akin  to 
mine,  although,  as  he  actually  expressed  it,  it  related  only 
to  the  reproductive  process  ;  it  is  clear,  moreover,  that  he, 
like  all  the  Greek  philosophers  except  Euripides,  paid  no 
heed  to  women,  and  did  not  consider  her  qualities  from 
any  other  point  of  view  than  that  of  her  share  in  repro- 
duction. 

Amongst  the  fathers  of  the  Church,  Tertullian  and  Origen 
certainly  had  a  very  low  opinion  of  woman,  and  St.  Augus- 
tine, except  for  his  relations  with  his  mother,  seems  to  have 
shared  their  view.  At  the  Renaissance  the  Aristotelian  con- 
ceptions gained  many  new  adherents,  amongst  whom  Jean 
Wier  (1518-1588)  may  be  cited  specially.  At  that  period 
there  was  a  general,  more  sensible  and  intuitive  under- 
standing on  the  subject,  which  is  now  treated  as  merely 
curious,  contemporary  science  having  bowed  the  knee  to 
other  than  Aristotelian  gods. 

In  recent  years  Henrik  Ibsen  (in  the  characters  of  Anitra, 
Rita,  and  Irene)  and  August  Strindberg  have  given  utter- 
ance to  this  view.  But  the  popularity  of  the  idea  of  the 
souUessness   of   woman    has  been    most    attained    by   the 


1 88  SEX  AND  CHARACTER 

wonderful  fairy  tales  of  Fouque,  who  obtained  the  material 
for  them  from  Paracelsus,  after  deep  study,  and  which  have 
been  set  to  music  by  E.  T.  A.  Hoffman,  Girschner,  and 
Albert  Lorzing. 

Undine,  the  soulless  Undine,  is  the  platonic  idea  of 
woman.  In  spite  of  all  bi-sexuality  she  most  really  resembles 
the  actuality.  The  well-known  phrase,  "  Women  have  no 
character,"  really  means  the  same  thing.  Personality  and 
individuality  (intelligible),  ego  and  soul,  will  and  (intel- 
ligible) character,  all  these  are  different  expressions  of  the 
same  actuality,  an  actuality  the  male  of  mankind  attains,  the 
female  lacks. 

But  since  the  soul  of  man  is  the  microcosm,  and  great 
men  are  those  who  live  entirely  in  and  through  their  souls, 
the  whole  universe  thus  having  its  being  in  them,  the  female 
must  be  described  as  absolutely  without  the  quality  of 
genius.  The  male  has  everything  within  him,  and,  as  Pico 
of  Mirandola  put  it,  only  specialises  in  this  or  that  part  of 
himself.  It  is  possible  for  him  to  attain  to  the  loftiest 
heights,  or  to  sink  to  the  lowest  depths  ;  he  can  become 
like  animals,  or  plants,  or  even  like  women,  and  so  there 
exist  woman-like  female  men. 

The  woman,  on  the  other  hand,  can  never  become  a  man. 
In  this  consists  the  most  important  limitation  to  the  asser- 
tions in  the  first  part  of  this  work.  Whilst  I  know  of  many 
men  who  are  practically  completely  psychically  female,  not 
merely  half  so,  and  have  seen  a  considerable  number  of 
women  with  masculine  traits,  I  have  never  yet  seen  a  single 
woman  who  was  not  fundamentally  female,  even  when  this 
femaleness  has  been  concealed  by  various  accessories  from 
the  person  herself,  not  to  speak  of  others.  One  must  be 
{cf.  chap.  i.  part  I.)  either  man  or  woman,  however  many 
peculiarities  of  both  sexes  one  may  have,  and  this  "  being," 
the  problem  of  this  work  from  the  start,  is  determined  by 
one's  relation  to  ethics  and  logic ;  but  whilst  there  are 
people  who  are  anatomically  men  and  psychically  women, 
there  is  no  such  thing  as  a  person  who  is  physically  female 
and  psychically  male,  notwithstanding  the  extreme  maleness 


MALE  AND  FEMALE  PSYCHOLOGY      189 

of  their  outward  appearance  and  the  unwomanliness  of 
their  expression. 

We  may  now  give,  with  certainty,  a  conclusive  answer  to 
the  question  as  to  the  giftedness  of  the  sexes  :  there  are 
women  with  undoubted  traits  of  genius,  but  there  is  no 
female  genius,  and  there  never  has  been  one  (not  even 
amongst  those  masculine  women  of  history  which  were  dealt 
with  in  the  first  part),  and  there  never  can  be  one.  Those 
who  are  in  favour  of  laxity  in  these  matters,  and  are  anxious 
to  extend  and  enlarge  the  idea  of  genius  in  order  to  make  it 
possible  to  include  women,  would  simply  by  such  action 
destroy  the  conception  of  genius.  If  it  is  in  any  way  pos- 
sible to  frame  a  definition  of  genius  that  would  thoroughly 
cover  the  ground,  I  believe  that  my  definition  succeeds. 
And  how,  then,  could  a  soulless  being  possess  genius  ? 
The  possession  of  genius  is  identical  with  profundity ;  and 
if  any  one  were  to  try  to  combine  woman  and  profundity  as 
subject  and  predicate,  he  would  be  contradicted  on  all 
sides.  A  female  genius  is  a  contradiction  in  terms,  for 
genius  is  simply  mtensified,  perfectly  developed,  universally 
conscious  maleness. 

The  man  of  genius  possesses,  like  everything  else,  the 
complete  female  in  himself  ;  but  woman  herself  is  only  a 
part  of  the  Universe,  and  the  part  can  never  be  the  whole  ; 
femaleness  can  never  include  genius.  This  lack  of  genius 
on  the  part  of  woman  is  inevitable  because  woman  is  not  a 
monad,  and  cannot  reflect  the  Universe.* 

The  proof  of  the  soullessness  of  woman  is  closely  con- 
nected with  much  of  what  was  contained  in  the  earlier 
chapters.  The  third  chapter  explained  that  woman  has 
her  experiences  in  the  form  of  henids,  whilst  those  of  men 
are  in  an  organised  form,  so  that  the  consciousness  of  the 
female  is  lower  in  grade  than  that  of  the  male.     Conscious- 

*  It  would  be  a  simple  matter  to  introduce  at  this  point  a  list  of 
the  works  of  the  most  famous  women,  and  show  by  a  few  examples 
how  little  they  deserve  the  title  of  genius.  But  it  would  be  a  weari- 
some task,  and  any  one  who  would  make  use  of  such  a  list  can 
easily  procure  it  for  himself,  so  that  I  shall  not  do  so. 


190  SEX  AND  CHARACTER 

ness,  however,  is  psychologically  a  fundamental  part  of  the 
theory  of  knowledge.  From  the  point  of  view  of  the  theory 
of  knowledge,  consciousness  and  the  possession  of  a  con- 
tinuous ego,  of  a  transcendental  subjective  soul,  are  identical 
conceptions.  Every  ego  exists  only  so  far  as  it  is  self-con- 
scious, conscious  of  the  contents  of  its  own  thoughts  ;  all 
real  existence  is  conscious  existence.  I  can  now  make  an 
important  addition  to  the  theory  of  henids.  The  organised 
contents  of  the  thoughts  of  the  male  are  not  merely  those  of 
the  female  articulated  and  formed,  they  are  not  what  was 
potential  in  the  female  becoming  actual  ;  from  the  very  first 
there  is  a  qualitative  difference.  The  psychical  contents  of 
the  male,  even  whilst  they  are  still  in  the  henid  stage  that 
they  always  try  to  emerge  from,  are  already  partly  concep- 
tual, and  it  is  probable  that  even  perceptions  in  the  male 
have  a  direct  tendency  towards  conceptions.  In  the  female, 
on  the  other  hand,  there  is  no  trace  of  conception  either  in 
recognition  or  in  thinking. 

^he  logical  axioms  are  the  foundation  of  all  formation  of 
mental  conceptions,  and  women  are  devoid  of  these  ;  the 
principle  of  identity  is  not  for  them  an  inevitable  standard, 
nor  do  they  fence  off  all  other  possibilities  from  their  con- 
ception by  using  the  principle  of  contradictories.  This  want 
of  definiteness  in  the  ideas  of  women  is  the  source  of  that 
"sensitiveness"  which  gives  the  widest  scope  to  vague  asso- 
ciations and  allows  the  most  radically  different  things  to  be 
grouped  together.^  And  even  women  with  the  best  and 
least  limited  memories  never  free  themselves  from  this  kind 
of  association  by  feelings.  For  insitance,  if  they  "  feel 
reminded  "  by  a  word  of  some  definite  colour,  or  by  a  human 
being  of  some  definite  thing  to  eat — forms  of  association 
common  with  women — they  rest  content  with  the  subjective 
association,  and  do  not  try  to  find  out  the  source  of  the 
comparison,  and  if  there  is  any  relation  in  it  to  actual  fact. 
The  complacency  and  selt-satisfaction  of  women  cor- 
responds with  what  has  been  called  their  intellectual 
unscrupulousness,  and  will  be  referred  to  again  in  connec- 
tion with  their  want  of  the  power  to  form  concepts.    This 


MALE  AND  FEMALE  PSYCHOLOGY      191 

subjection  to  waves  of  feeling,  this  want  of  respect  for 
conceptions,  tliis  self-appreciation  without  any  attempt 
to  avoid  shi.llo'vness,  characterise  as  essentially  female 
the  changeable  styles  of  many  modern  painters  and 
novelists.  Male  thought  is  fundamentally  different  from 
female  thought  in  its  craving  for  definite  form,  and 
all  art  that  consists  of  moods  is  essentially  a  formless 
art. 

The  psychical  contents  of  man's  thoughts,  therefore,  are 
more  than  the  explicit  realisation  of  what  women  think  in 
henids.  Woman's  thought  is  a  sliding  and  gliding  through 
subjects,  a  superficial  tasting  of  things  that  a  man,  who 
studies  the  depths,  would  scarcely  notice;  it  is  an  extravagant 
and  dainty  method  of  skimming  which  has  no  grasp  of 
accuracy.  (A  woman's  thought  is  superficial,  and  touch 
is  the  mosr  highly  developed  of  the  female  senses,  the 
most  notable  characteristic  of  the  woman  which  she  can 
bring  to  a  high  state  by  her  unaided  efforts.^  Touch  necessi- 
tates a  limiting  of  the  interest  to  superficialities,  it  is  a  vague 
effect  of  the  whole  and  does  not  depend  on  definite  details. 
■^Vhen  a  woman  "  understands  "  a  man  (of  the  possibility  or 
impossibility  of  any  real  understanding  I  shall  speak  later), 
she  is  simply,  so  to  speak  tasting  (however  wanting  in 
taste  the  comparison  may  be)  what  he  has  thought  about 
he^  Since,  on  her  own  part,  there  is  no  sharp  differentia- 
tion, it  is  plain  that  she  will  often  think  that  she  herself  has 
been  understood  when  there  is  no  more  present  than  a 
vague  similarity  of  perceptions.  The  incongruity  between 
the  man  and  woman  depends,  in  a  special  measure,  on  the 
fact  that  the  contents  of  the  thoughts  of  the  man  are  not 
merely  those  of  the  woman  in  a  higher  state  of  differentia- 
tion, but  that  the  two  have  totally  distinct  sequences  of 
thought  applied  to  the  same  object,  conceptual  thought  in 
the  one  and  indistinct  sensing  in  the  other ;  and  when 
what  is  called  "  understanding  "  in  the  two  cases  is  com- 
pared, the  comparison  is  not  between  a  fully  organised 
integrated  thought  and  a  lower  stage  of  the  same  process; 
but  in  the  understanding  of  man  and  woman  there  is  on 


192  SEX  AND  CHARACTER 

the  one  side  a  conceptual  thought,  on  the  other  side  an 
unconceptual  "  feeling,"  a  henid. 

The  unconceptual  nature  of  the  thinking  of  a  woman  is 
simply  the  result  of  her  less  perfect  consciousness,  of  her 
want  of  an  ego.  It  is  the  conception  that  unites  the  mere 
complex  of  perceptions  into  an  object,  and  this  it  does 
independently  of  the  presence  of  an  actual  perception.  The 
existence  of  the  complex  of  perceptions  is  dependent  on  the 
will ;  the  will  can  shut  the  eyes  and  stop  the  ears  so  that  the 
person  no  longer  sees  nor  hears,  but  may  get  drunk  or  go  to 
sleep  and  forget.  It  is  the  conception  which  brings  freedom 
from  the  eternally  subjective,  eternally  psychological  rela- 
tivity of  the  actual  perceptions,  and  which  creates  the 
things  in  themselves.  By  its  power  of  forming  conceptions 
the  intellect  can  spontaneously  separate  itself  from  the 
object ;  conversely,  it  is  only  when  there  is  a  comprehending 
function  that  subject  and  object  can  be  separated  and  so 
distinguished  ;  in  all  other  cases  there  is  only  a  mass  of  like 
and  unlike  images  present  mingling  together  v/ithout  law 
and  order.  The  conception  creates  definite  realities  from  the 
floating  images,  the  object  from  the  perception,  the  object 
which  stands  like  an  enemy  opposite  the  subject  that  the 
subject  may  measure  its  strength  upon  it.  The  conception 
is  thus  the  creator  of  reality;  it  is  the  "transcendental 
object "  of  Kant's  "  Critique  of  Reason,"  but  it  always 
involves  a  transcendental  "subject." 

It  is  impossible  to  say  of  a  mere  complex  of  perceptions 
that  it  is  like  itself  ;  in  the  moment  that  I  have  made  the 
judgment  of  identity,  the  complex  of  perceptions  has 
become  a  concept.  And  so  the  conception  gives  their 
value  to  all  processes  of  verification  and  all  syllogisms ; 
the  conception  makes  the  contents  of  thought  free  by  bind- 
ing them.  It  gives  freedom  both  to  the  subject  and  object ; 
for  the  two  freedoms  involve  each  other.  All  freedom  is 
in  reality  self-binding,  both  in  logic  and  in  ethics.  Man  is 
free  only  when  he  himself  is  the  law.  And  so  the  function 
of  making  concepts  is  the  power  by  which  man  gives  him- 
self dignity ;  he  honours  himself  by  giving  freedom  to  the 


MALE  AND  FEMALE  PSYCHOLOGY      193 

objective  world,  by  making  it  part  of  the  objective  body  of 
knowledge  to  which  recourse  may  be  had  when  two  men 
differ.  The  woman  cannot  in  this  way  set  herself  over 
against  realities,  she  and  they  swing  together  capriciously  ; 
she  cannot  give  freedom  to  her  objects  as  she  herself  is  not 
free. 

The  mode  in  which  perceptions  acquire  independence  in 
conceptions  is  the  means  of  getting  free  from  subjectivity. 
The  conception  is  that  about  which  I  think,  write,  and 
speak.  And  in  this  way  there  comes  the  belief  that  I  can 
make  judgments  concerning  it.  Hume,  Huxley,  and  other 
"immanent"  psychologists,  tried  to  identify  the  concep- 
tion with  a  mere  generalisation,  so  making  no  distinction 
between  logical  and  psychological  thought.  In  doing  this 
they  ignored  the  power  of  making  judgments.  In  every 
judgment  there  is  an  act  of  verification  or  of  contradiction, 
an  approval  or  rejection,  and  the  standard  for  these  judg- 
ments, the  idea  of  truth,  must  be  something  external  to  that 
on  what  it  is  acting.  If  there  are  nothing  but  perceptions^ 
then  all  perceptions  must  have  an  equal  validity,  and  there 
can  be  no  standard  by  which  to  form  a  real  world. 
Empiricism  in  this  fashion  really  destroys  the  reality  of 
experience,  and  what  is  called  positivism  is  no  more  than 
nihilism.  The  idea  of  a  standard  of  truth,  the  idea  of 
truth,  cannot  lie  in  experience.  In  every  judgment  this 
idea  of  the  existence  of  truth  is  implicit.  The  claim  to 
real  knowledge  depends  on  this  capacity  to  judge, 
involves  the  conception  of  the  possibility  of  truth  in  the 
judgment. 

This  claim  to  be  able  to  reach  knowledge  is  no  more 
than  to  say  that  the  subject  can  judge  of^the  object,  can 
say  that  the  object  is  true.  The  objects  on  which  we  make 
judgments  are  conceptions ;  the  conception  is  what  we  know. 
The  conception  places  a  subject  and  an  object  against  one 
another,  and  the  judgment  then  creates  a  relation  between 
the  two.  The  attainment  of  truth  simply  means  that  the 
subject  can  judge  rightly  of  the  object,  and  so  the  function 
of  making  judgments  is  what  places  the  ego  in  relation  to 


194  SEX  AND  CHARACTER 

the  all,  is  what  makes  a  real  unity  of  the  ego  and  the  all 
possible.  And  thus  we  reach  an  answer  to  the  old  problem 
as  to  whether  conception  or  judgment  has  precedence  ;  the 
answer  is  that  the  two  are  necessary  to  one  another.  The 
faculty  of  making  conceptions  cleaves  subject  and  object 
and  unites  them  again. 

A  being  like  the  female,  without  the  power  of  making  con- 
cepts,is  unable  to  make  judgments.  In  her  "mind"  subjective 
and  objective  are  not  separated;  there  is  no  possibility  of 
making  judgments,  and  no  possibility  of  reaching,  or  of 
desiring,  truth.  No  woman  is  really  interested  in  science  ; 
she  may  deceive  herself  and  many  good  men,  but  bad 
psychologists,  by  thinking  so.  It  may  be  taken  as  certain, 
that  whenever  a  woman  has  done  something  of  any  little 
importance  in  the  scientific  world  (Sophie  Germain,  Mary 
Somerville,  &c.)  it  is  always  because  of  some  man  in  the 
background  whom  they  desire  to  please  in  this  way ;  and 
it  is  more  often  justifiable  to  say  "cherchez  I'homme" 
where  women  are  concerned  than  "  cherchez  la  femme  "  in 
the  case  of  men. 

But  there  have  never  been  any  great  discoveries  in  the 
world  of  science  made  by  women,  because  the  facility  for 
truth  only  proceeds  from  a  desire  for  truth,  and  the  former 
is  always  in  proportion  to  the  latter.  Woman's  sense  of 
reality  is  much  less  than  man's,  in  spite  of  much  repetition 
of  the  contrary  opinion,  i^ith  women  the  pursuit  of  know- 
ledge is  always  subordinated  to  something  else,  and  if  this 
alien  impulse  is  sufficiently  strong  they  can  see  sharply  and 
unerringly,  but  woman  will  never  be  able  to  see  the  value 
of  truth  in  itself  and  in  relation  to  her  own  self.  Where 
there  is  some  check  to  what  she  wishes  (perhaps  uncon- 
sciously) a  woman  becomes  quite  uncritical  and  loses  all 
touch  with  realityj^  This  is  why  women  so  often  believe 
themselves  to  have  been  the  victims  of  sexual  overtures ; 
this  is  the  reason  of  extreme  frequency  of  hallucinations 
of  the  sense  of  touch  in  women,  of  the  intensive  reality  of 
which  it  is  almost  impossible  for  a  man  to  form  an  idea. 
This  also  is  why  the  imagination  of  women  is  composed  of 


MALE  AND  FEMALE  PSYCHOLOGY      195 

lies  and  errors,  whilst  the  imagination  of  the  philosopher  is 
the  highest  form  of  truth. 

The  idea  of  truth  is  the  foundation  of  everything  that 
deserves  the  name  of  judgment.  Knowledge  is  simply  the 
making  of  judgments,  and  thought  itself  is  simply  another 
name  for  judgment.  Deduction  is  the  necessary  process  in 
making  judgments,  and  involves  the  propositions  of  identity 
and  of  contradictories,  and,  as  I  have  shown,  these  propo- 
sitions are  not  axiomatic  for  women. 
/A  psychological  proof  that  the  power  of  making  judg- 
ments is  a  masculine  trait  lies  in  the  fact  that  the  woman 
recognises  it  as  such,  and  that  it  acts  on  her  as  a  tertiary 
sexual  character  of  the  male.  A  woman  always  expects 
definite  convictions  in  a  man,  and  appropriates  them  ;  she 
has  no  understanding  of  indecision  in  a  man.  She  always 
expects  a  man  to  talk,  and  a  man's  speech  is  to  her  a  sign  of 
his  manliness.  It  is  true  that  woman  has  the  gift  of  speech, 
but  she  has  not  the  art  of  talking  ;  she  converses  (flirts)  or 
chatters,  but  she  does  not  talk.  She  is  most  dangerous, 
however,  when  she  is  dumb,  for  men  are  only  too  inclined 
to  take  her  quiescence  for  silencd> 

The  absolute  female,  then,  is  devoid  not  only  of  the 
logical  rules,  but  of  the  functions  of  making  concepts  and 
judgments  which  depend  on  them.  As  the  very  nature  of 
the  conceptual  faculty  consists  in  posing  subject  against 
object,  and  as  the  subject  takes  its  deepest  and  fullest  mean- 
ing from  its  power  of  forming  judgments  on  its  objects,  it  is 
clear  that  women  cannot  be  recognised  as  possessing  even 
the  subject. 

I  must  add  to  the  exposition  of  the  non-logical  nature  ot 
the  female  some  statements  as  to  her  non-moral  nature. 
The  profound  falseness  of  woman,  the  result  of  the  want  in 
her  of  a  permanent  relation  to  the  idea  of  truth  or  to  the  idea 
of  value,  would  prove  a  subject  of  discussion  so  exhaustive 
that  I  must  go  to  work  another  way.  There  are  such 
endless  imitations  of  ethics,  such  confusing  copies  of  morality, 
that  women  are  often  said  to  be  on  a  moral  plane  higher 
than  that  of  man.     I  have  already  pointed  out  the  need  to 


196  SEX  AND  CHARACTER 

distinguish  between  the  non-moral  and  the  immoral,  and  1 
now  repeat  that  with  regard  to  women  we  can  talk  only  of 
the  non-moral,  of  the  complete  absence  of  a  moral  sense. 
It  is  a  well-known  fact  of  criminal  statistics  and  of  daily  life 
that  there  are  very  few  female  criminals.  The  apologists  of 
the  morality  of  women  always  point  to  this  fact. 

But  in  deciding  the  question  as  to  the  morality  of  women 
we  have  to  consider  not  if  a  particular  person  has  objectively 
sinned  against  the  idea,  but  if  the  person  has  or  has  not  a 
subjective  centre  of  being  that  can  enter  into  a  relation  with 
the  idea,  a  relation  the  value  of  which  is  lowered  when  a 
sin  is  committed.  No  doubt  the  male  criminal  inherits  his 
criminal  instincts,  but  none  the  less  he  is  conscious — in 
spite  of  theories  of  "  moral  insanity  " — that  by  his  action  he 
has  lowered  the  value  of  his  claim  on  life.  All  criminals 
are  cowardly  in  this  matter,  and  there  is  none  of  them  that 
thinks  he  has  raised  his  value  and  his  self-consciousness  by 
his  crime,  or  that  would  try  to  justify  it  to  himself. 

The  male  criminal  has  from  birth  a  relation  to  the  idea 
of  value  just  like  any  other  man,  but  the  criminal  impulse, 
when  it  succeeds  in  dominating  him,  destroys  this  almost 
completely.  Woman,  on  the  contrary,  often  believes  her- 
self to  have  acted  justly  when,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  she  has 
just  done  the  greatest  possible  act  of  meanness  ;  whilst  the 
true  criminal  remains  mute  before  reproach,  a  woman  can 
at  once  give  indignant  expression  to  her  astonishment  and 
anger  that  any  one  should  question  her  perfect  right  to  act 
in  this  or  that  way.  l^omen  are  convinced  of  their  own 
integrity  without  ever  having  sat  in  judgment  on  it,'  The 
criminal  does  not,  it  is  true,  reflect  on  himself,  but  he  never 
urges  his  own  integrity ;  he  is  much  more  inclined  to  get 
rid  of  the  thought  of  his  integrity,*  because  it  might  remind 
him  of  his  guilt  :  and  in  this  is  the  proof  that  he  had  a 

*  A  male  criminal  even  feels  guilty  when  he  has  not  actually 
done  wrong.  He  can  always  accept  the  reproaches  of  others  as  to 
deception,  thieving,  and  so  on,  even  if  he  has  never  committed  such 
acts,  because  he  knows  he  is  capable  of  them.  So  also  he  always 
feels  himself  "  caught "  when  any  other  offender  is  arrested. 


MALE  AND   FEMALE  PSYCHOLOGY      197 

relation  to  the  idea  (of  truth),  and  only  objects  to  be  re- 
minded of  his  unfaithfulness  to  his  better  self.  No  male 
criminal  has  ever  believed  that  his  punishment  was  unjust. 
A  woman,  on  the  contrary,  is  convinced  of  the  animosity  of 
her  accuser,  and  if  she  does  not  wish  to  be  convinced  of  it, 
no  one  can  persuade  her  that  she  has  done  wrong. 

If  any  one  talks  to  her  it  usually  happens  that  she  bursts 
into  tears,  Jbegs  for  pardon,  and  "  confesses  her  fault,"  and 
may  really  believe  that  she  feels  her  guilt;  but  only  when  she 
desires  to  do  so,  and  the  outbreak  of  tears  has  given  her  a 
certain  sort  of  satisfaction.  The  male  criminal  is  callous  ; 
he  does  not  spin  round  in  a  trice,  as  a  woman  would  do  in 
a  similar  instance  if  her  accuser  knew  how  to  handle  her 
skilfully. 

The  personal  torture  which  arises  from  guilt,  which  cries 
aloud  in  its  anguish  at  having  brought  such  a  stain  upon 
herself,  no  woman  knows,  and  an  apparent  exception  (the 
penitent,  who  becomes  a  self-mortifying  devotee,)  will  cer- 
tainly prove  that  a  woman  only  feels  a  vicarious  guilt. 

I  am  not  arguing  that  woman  is  evil  and  anti-moral  ;  I 
state  that  she  cannot  be  really  evil ;  she  is  merely  non-moral. 

Womanly  compassion  and  female  modesty  are  the  two 
other  phenomena  which  are  generally  urged  by  the  defenders 
of  female  virtue.  It  is  especially  from  womanly  kindness, 
womanly  sympathy,  that  the  beautiful  descriptions  of  the 
soul  of  woman  have  gained  most  support,  and  the  final 
argument  of  all  belief  in  the  superior  morality  of  woman  is 
the  conception  of  her  as  the  hospital  nurse,  the  tender 
sister.  I  am  sorry  to  have  to  mention  this  point,  and  should 
not  have  done  so,  but  I  have  been  forced  to  do  so  by  a 
verbal  objection  made  to  me,  which  can  be  easily  foreseen. 

It  is  very  shortsighted  of  any  one  to  consider  the  nurse 
as  a  proof  of  the  sympathy  of  women,  because  it  really 
implies  the  opposite.  For  a  man  could  never  stand  the 
sight  of  the  sufferings  of  the  sick  ;  he  would  suffer  so 
intensely  that  he  would  be  completely  upset  and  incapable 
of  lengthy  attendance  on  them.  Any  one  who  has  watched 
nursing  sisters  is  astounded  at  their  equanimity  and  "  sweet- 


198  SEX  AND  CHARACTER 

ness "  even  in  the  presence  of  most  terrible  death  throes ; 
and  it  is  well  that  it  is  so,  for  man,  who  cannot  stand  suffer- 
ing and  death,  would  make  a  very  bad  nurse.  A  man  would 
want  to  assuage  the  pain  and  ward  off  death  ;  in  a  word,  he 
would  want  to  help;  where  there  is  nothing  to  be  done  he  is 
better  away;  it  is  only  then  that  nursing  is  justified  and  that 
woman  offers  herself  for  it.  But  it  would  be  quite  wrong 
to  regard  this  capacity  of  women  in  an  ethical  aspect. 

olere  it  may  be  said  that  for  woman  the  problem  of  soli- 
tude and  society  does  not  exist.  She  is  well  adapted  for 
social  relations  (as,  for  instance,  those  of  a  companion  or 
sick-nurse),  simply  because  for  her  there  is  no  transition 
from  solitude  to  society.  In  the  case  of  a  man,  the  choice 
between  solitude  and  society  is  serious  when  it  has  to  be 
made^  The  woman  gives  up  no  solitude  when  she  nurses 
the  sick,  as  she  would  have  to  do  were  she  to  deserve  moral 
credit  for  her  action  ;  ^  woman  is  never  in  a  condition  of 
solitude,  and  knows  neither  the  love  of  it  nor  the  fear  of  it. 
The  woman  is  always  living  in  a  condition  of  fusion  with  all 
the  human  beings  she  knows,  even  when  she  is  alone  ;  she 
is  not  a  "  monad,"  for  all  monads  are  sharply  marked  off 
from  other  existences^  Women  have  no  definite  individual 
limits ;  they  are  not  unlimited  in  the  sense  that  geniuses 
have  no  limits,  being  one  with  the  whole  world  ;  they  are 
unlimited  only  in  the  sense  that  they  are  not  marked  off 
from  the  common  stock  of  mankind. 

This  sense  of  continuity  with  the  rest  of  mankind  is  a 
sexual  character  of  the  female,  and  displays  itself  in  the 
desire  to  touch,  to  be  in  contact  with,  the  object  of  her 
pity  ;  the  mode  in  which  her  tenderness  expresses  itself  is 
a  kind  of  animal  sense  of  contact.  It  shows  the  absence  of 
the  sharp  line  that  separates  one  real  personalty  from 
another.  The  woman  does  not  respect  the  sorrow  of  her 
neighbour  by  silence  ;  she  tries  to  raise  him  from  his  grief 
by  speech,  feeling  that  she  must  be  in  physical,  rather  than 
spiritual,  contact  with  hini> 

This  diffused  life,  one  of  the  most  fundamental  qualities 
of  the  female  nature,  is  the  cause  of  the  impressibility  of  all 


MALE  AND  FEMALE  PSYCHOLOGY      199 

women,  their  unreserved  and  shameless  readiness  to  shed 
tears  on  the  most  ordinary  occasion.  It  is  not  without 
reason  that  we  associate  wailing  with  women,  and  think 
little  of  a  man  who  sheds  tears  in  public.  A  woman  weeps 
v/ith  those  that  weep  and  laughs  with  those  that  laugh — 
unless  she  herself  is  the  cause  of  the  laughter — so  that  the 
greater  part  of  female  sympathy  is  ready-made. 

tit  is  only  women  who  demand  pity  from  other  people, 
who  weep  before  them  and  claim  their  sympathy.  This  is 
one  of  the  strongest  pieces  of  eLvidence  for  the  psychical 
shamelessness  of  women.)  A  woman  provokes  the  compas- 
sion of  strangers  in  order  to  weep  with  them  and  be  able  to 
pity  herself  more  than  she  already  does.  It  is  not  too  much 
to  say  that  even  when  a  woman  weeps  alone  she  is  weeping 
with  those  that  she  knows  would  pity  her  and  so  intensify- 
ing her  self-pity  by  the  thought  of  the  pity  of  others.  (Self- 
pity  is  eminently  a  female  characteristic  ;  a  woman  will 
associate  herself  with  others,  make  herself  the  object  of 
pity  for  these  others,  and  then  at  once,  deeply  stirred, 
begin  to  weep  with  them  about  herself,  the  poor  thing. 
Perhaps  nothing  so  stirs  the  feeling  of  shame  in  a  man 
as  to  detect  in  himself  the  impulse  towards  this  self- 
pity,  this  state  of  mind  in  which  the  subject  becomes  the 
objectJ^ 

As  Schopenhauer  put  it,  female  sympathy  is  a  matter  of 
sobbing  and  wailing  on  the  slightest  provocation,  without 
the  smallest  attempt  to  control  the  emotion  ;/on  the  other 
hand,  all  true  sorrow,  like  true  sympathy,  just  because  it  is 
real  sorrow,  must  be  reserved  ;  no  sorrow  can  really  be  so 
reserved  as  sympathy  and  love,  for  these  make  us  most 
fully  conscious  of  the  limits  of  each  personality.)  Love 
and  its  bashfulness  will  be  considered  later  on  ;  in  the 
meantime  let  us  be  assured  that  in  sympathy,  in  genuine 
masculine  sympathy,  there  is  always  a  strong  feeling  of 
reserve,  a  sense  almost  of  guilt,  because  one's  friend  is 
worse  off  than  oneself,  because  I  am  not  he,  but  a  being 
separated  from  his  being  by  extraneous  circumstances.  A 
man's  sympathy  is  the  principle  of  individuality  blushing  for 


200  SEX  AND  CHARACTER 

itself ;  and  hence  man's  sympathy  is  reserved  whilst  that 
of  woman  is  aggressive. 

The  existence  of  modesty  in  women  has  been  discussed 
already  to  a  certain  extent  ;  I  shall  have  more  to  say  about 
it  in  relation  with  hysteria.  But  it  is  difficult  to  see  how  it 
can  be  maintained  that  this  is  a  female  virtue,  if  one  reflect 
on  the  readiness  with  which  women  accept  the  habit  of 
wearing  low-necked  dresses  wherever  custom  prescribes  it. 
A  person  is  either  modest  or  immodest,  and  modesty  is  not 
a  quality  which  can  be  assumed  or  discarded  from  hour  to 
hour. 

Strong  evidence  of  the  want  of  modesty  in  woman  is  to 
be  derived  from  the  fact  that  women  dress  and  undress  in 
the  presence  of  one  another  with  the  greatest  freedom, 
whilst  men  try  to  avoid  similar  circumstances.  Moreover, 
when  women  are  alone  together,  they  are  very  ready  to 
discuss  their  physical  qualities,  especially  with  regard  to 
their  attractiveness  for  men  ;  whilst  men,  practically  with- 
out exception,  avoid  all  notice  of  one  another's  sexual 
characters. 

I  shall  return  to  this  subject  again.  In  the  meantime  I 
wish  to  refer  to  the  argument  of  the  second  chapter  in  this 
connection.  One  must  be  fully  conscious  of  a  thing  before 
one  can  have  a  feeling  of  shame  about  it,  and  so  differentia- 
tion is  as  necessary  for  the  sense  of  shame  as  for  conscious- 
ness. The  female,  who  is  only  sexual,  can  appear  to  be 
asexual  because  she  is  sexuality  itself,  and  so  her  sexuality 
does  not  stand  out  separately  from  the  rest  of  her  being, 
either  in  space  or  in  time,  as  in  the  case  of  the  male. 
Woman  can  give  an  impression  of  being  modest  because 
there  is  nothing  in  her  to  contrast  with  her  sexuality.  And 
so  the  woman  is  always  naked  or  never  naked — we  may 
express  it  either  way — never  naked,  because  the  true  feeling 
of  nakedness  is  impossible  to  her  ;  always  naked,  because 
there  is  not  in  her  the  material  for  the  sense  of  relativity  by 
which  she  could  become  aware  of  her  nakedness  and  so 
make  possible  the  desire  to  cover  it. 

^What    I  have   been    discussing  depends   on   the   actual 


MALE  AND  FEMALE  PSYCHOLOGY      201 

meaning  of  the  word  "  ego "  to  a  woman.  If  a  woman 
were  asked  what  she  meant  by  her  "  ego  "  she  would  cer- 
tainly think  of  her  body.  Her  superficies,  that  is  the 
woman's  ego.  The  ego  of  the  female  is  quite  correctly 
described  by  Mach  in  his  "  Anti-metaphysical  Remarks." 

The  ego  of  a  woman  is  the  cause  of  the  vanity  which  is 
specific  of  women.  The  analogue  of  this  in  the  male  is  an 
emanation  of  the  set  of  his  will  towards  his  conception  of 
the  good,  and  its  objective  expression  is  a  sensitiveness,  a 
desire  that  no  one  shall  call  in  question  the  possibility  of 
attaining  this  supreme  good.  It  is  his  personality  that 
gives  to  man  his  value  and  his  freedom  from  the  conditions 
of  time.  This  supreme  good,  which  is  beyond  price,  because, 
in  the  words  of  Kant,  there  can  be  found  no  equivalent  for 
it,  is  the  dignity  of  man.  Women,  in  spite  of  what  Schiller 
has  said,  have  no  dignity,  and  the  word  "  lady "  was 
invented  to  supply  this  defect,^nd  her  pride  will  find  its 
expression  in  what  she  regards  as  the  supreme  good,  that  is 
to  say,  in  the  preservation,  improvement,  and  display  of  her 
personal  beautyi  The  pride  of  the  female  is  something 
quite  peculiar  to  herself,  something  foreign  even  to  the 
most  handsome  man,  an  obsession  by  her  own  body ;  a 
pleasure  which  displays  itself,  even  in  the  least  handsome 
girl,  by  admiring  herself  in  the  mirror,  by  stroking  herself 
and  playing  with  her  own  hair,  but  which  comes  to  its  fu^ll 
measure  only  in  the  effect  that  her  body  has  on  man.  \A 
woman  has  no  true  solitude,  because  she  is  always  conscious 
of  herself  only  in  relation  to  others.  The  other  side  of  the 
vanity  of  women  is  the  desire  to  feel  that  her  body  is 
admired,  or,  rather,  sexually  coveted,  by  a  man.y 

This  desire  is  so  strong  that  the're  are  many  women  to 
whom  it  is  sufficient  merely  to  know  that  they  are  coveted. 

The  vanity  of  women  is,  then,  always  in  relation  to  others ; 
a  woman  lives  only  in  the  thoughts  of  others  about  her. 
The  sensibility  of  women  is  directed  to  this.  A  woman 
never  forgets  that  some  one  thought  her  ugly  ;  a  woman 
never  considers  herself  ugly  ;  the  successes  of  others  at  the 
most  only  make  her  think  of  herself  as  perhaps  less  attrac- 


202  SEX  AND  CHARACTER 

tive.  But  no  woman  ever  believes  herself  to  be  anything 
but  beautiful  and  desirable  when  she  looks  at  herself  in  the 
glass ;  she  never  accepts  her  own  ugliness  as  a  painful 
reality  as  a  man  would,  and  never  ceases  to  try  to  persuade 
others  of  the  contrary. 

What  is  the  source  of  this  form  of  vanity,  peculiar  to  the 
female  ?  It  comes  from  the  absence  of  an  intelligible  ego, 
the  only  begetter  of  a  constant  and  positive  sense  of  value  ; 
it  is,  in  fact,  that  she  is  devoid  of  a  sense  of  personal  value. 
^s  she  sets  no  store  by  herself  or  on  herself,  she  endeavours 
to  attain  to  a  value  in  the  eyes  of  others  by  exciting  their 
desire  and  admiratioru  The  only  thing  which  has  any 
absolute  and  ultimate  value  in  the  world  is  the  soul.  "  Ye 
are  better  than  many  sparrows "  were  Christ's  words  to 
mankind.  •(A  woman  does  not  value  herself  by  the  constancy 
and  freedom  of  her  personality;  but  this  is  the  only  possible 
method  for  every  creature  possessing  an  ego.  But  if  a  real 
woman,  and  this  is  certainly  the  case,  can  only  value  herself 
at  the  rate  of  the  man  who  has  fixed  his  choice  on  her  ;  if  it 
is  only  through  her  husband  or  lover  that  she  can  attain  to 
a  value  not  only  in  social  and  material  things,  but  also  in 
her  innermost  nature,  it  follows  that  she  possesses  no  per- 
sonal value,  she  is  devoid  of  man's  sense  of  the  value  of 
his  own  personality  for  itself.  And  so  women  always  get 
their  sense  of  value  from  something  outside  themselves, 
from  their  money  or  estates,  the  number  and  richness  of 
their  garments,  the  position  of  their  box  at  the  opera,  their 
children,  and,  above  all,  their  husbands  or  lovers.  When  a 
woman  is  quarrelling  with  another  woman,  her  final  weapon, 
and  the  weapon  she  finds  most  effective  and  discomfiting,  is 
to  proclaim  her  superior  social  position,  her  wealth  or  title, 
and,  above  all,  her  youthfulness  and  the  devotion  of  her 
husband  or  lover  ;  whereas  a  man  in  similar  case  would  lay 
himself  open  to  contempt  if  he  relied  on  anything  except 
his  own  personal  individuality^ 

The  absence  of  the  soul  in  woman  may  also  be  mrerred 
from  the  following  :  ^Whilst  a  woman  is  stimulated  to  try  to 
impress  a  man  from  the  mere  fact  that  he  has  paid  no 


MALE  AND  FEMALE  PSYCHOLOGY      203 

attention  to  her  (Goethe  gave  this  as  a  practical  receipt),  the 
whole  life  of  a  woman,  in  fact,  being  an  expression  of  this 
side  of  her  nature,  a  man,  if  a  woman  treats  him  rudely  or 
indifferently,  feels  repelled  by  her.  Nothing  makes  a  man 
so  happy  as  the  love  of  a  girl  ;  even  if  he  did  not  at  first 
return  her  love,  there  is  a  great  probability  of  love  being 
aroused  in  him.  The  love  of  a  man  for  whom  she  does  not 
care  is  only  a  gratification  of  the  vanity  of  a  woman,  or  an 
awakening  and  rousing  of  slumbering  desires.  A  woman 
extends  her  claims  equally  to  all  men  on  earth.> 

The  shamelessness  and  heartlessness  of  women  are  shown 
in  the  way  in  which  they  talk  of  being  loved.  A  man  feels 
ashamed  of  being  loved,  because  he  is  always  in  the  position 
of  being  the  active,  free  agent,  and  because  he  knows  that 
he  can  never  give  himself  entirely  to  love,  and  there  is 
nothing  about  which  he  is  so  silent,  even  when  there  is  no 
special  reason  for  him  to  fear  that  he  might  compromise 
the  lady  by  talking.  A  woman  boasts  about  her  love  affairs, 
and  parades  them  before  other  women  in  order  to  make 
them  envious  of  her.  Woman  does  not  look  upon  a  man's 
inclination  for  her  so  much  as  a  tribute  to  her  actual  worth, 
or  a  deep  insight  into  her  nature,  as  the  bestowing  a  value 
on  her  which  she  otherwise  would  not  have,  as  the  gift  to 
her  of  an  existence  and  essence  with  which  she  justifies 
herself  before  others. 

The  remark  in  an  earlier  chapter  about  the  unfailing 
memory  of  woman  for  all  the  compliments  she  has  ever 
received  since  childhood  is  explained  by  the  foregoing  facts. 
^t  is  from  compliments,  first  of  all,  that  woman  gets  a  sense 
of  her  "value,"  and  that  is  why  women  expect  men  to  be 
"  polite."  Politeness  is  the  easiest  form  of  pleasing  a  woman, 
and  however  little  it  costs  a  man  it  is  dear  to  a  woman, 
who  never  forgets  an  attention,  and  lives  upon  the  most 
insipid  flattery,  even  in  her  old  age.'  One  only  remembers 
what  possesses  a  value  in  one's  eyes ;  it  may  safely  be  said 
that  it  is  for  compliments  women  have  the  most  developed 
memory.  The  woman  can  attain  a  sense  of  value  by  these 
external  aids,  because  she  does  not  possess  within  her  an 


204  SEX  AND  CHARACTER 

inner  standard  of  value  which  diminishes  everything  outside 
her.  ^he  phenomena  of  courtesy  and  chivalry  are  simply 
additional  proofs  that  women  have  no  souls,  and  that  when 
a  man  is  being  "  polite  "  to  a  woman  he  is  simply  ascribing 
to  her  the  minimum  sense  of  personal  value,  a  form  of 
deference  to  which  importance  is  attached  precisely  in  the 
measure  that  it  is  misunderstood.N 

The  non-moral  nature  of  woman  reveals  itself  in  the  mode 
in  which  she  can  so  easily  forget  an  immoral  action  she  has 
committed.  It  is  almost  characteristic  of  a  woman  that  she 
cannot  believe  that  she  has  done  wrong,  and  so  is  able  to 
deceive  both  herself  and  her  husband.  Men,  on  the  other 
hand,  remember  nothing  so  well  as  the  guilty  episodes  of 
their  lives.  Here  memory  reveals  itself  as  eminently  a 
moral  phenomenon.  Forgiving  and  forgetting,  not  forgiving 
and  understanding,  go  together.  When  one  remembers  a 
lie,  one  reproaches  oneself  afresh  about  it.  A  woman 
forgets,  because  she  does  not  blame  herself  for  an  act  of 
meanness,  because  she  does  not  understand  it,  having  no 
relation  to  the  moral  idea.  It  is  not  surprismg  that  she  is 
ready  to  lie.  Women  have  been  regarded  as  virtuous, 
simply  because  the  problem  of  morality  has  not  presented 
itself  to  them  ;  they  have  been  held  to  be  even  more  moral 
than  man ;  this  is  simply  because  they  do  not  understand 
immorality.  The  innocence  of  a  child  is  not  meritorious ; 
if  a  patriarch  could  be  innocent  he  might  be  praised  for  it. 

Introspection  is  an  attribute  confined  to  males,  if  we  leave 
out  of  account  the  hysterical  self-reproaches  of  certain 
women — and  consciousness  of  guilt  and  repentance  are 
equally  male.  The  penances  that  women  lay  on  themselves, 
remarkable  imitations  of  the  sense  of  guilt,  will  be  discussed 
when  I  come  to  deal  with  what  passes  for  introspection  in 
the  female  sex.  The  "  subject "  of  introspection  is  the  moral 
agent ;  it  has  a  relation  to  psychical  phenomena  only  in  so 
far  as  it  sits  in  judgment  on  them. 

It  is  quite  in  the  nature  of  positivism  that  Comte  denies 
the  possibility  of  introspection,  and  throws  ridicule  on 
it.     For  certainly  it  is  absurd  that  a  psychical  event  and  a 


MALE  AND  FEMALE  PSYCHOLOGY      205 

judgment  of  it  could  coincide  if  the  interpretations  of  the 
positivists  be  accepted.  It  is  only  on  the  assumption  that 
there  exists  an  ego  unconditioned  by  time  and  intrinsically 
capable  of  moral  judgments,  endowed  with  memory  and 
with  the  power  of  making  comparisons,  that  we  can  justify 
the  belief  in  the  possibility  of  introspection. 

If  woman  had  a  sense  of  her  personal  value  and  the  will 
to  defend  it  against  all  external  attacks  she  could  not  be 
jealous.  Apparently  all  women  are  jealous,  and  jealousy 
depends  on  the  failure  to  recognise  the  rights  of  others. 
Even  the  jealousy  of  a  mother  when  she  sees  another 
woman's  daughters  married  before  her  own  depends  simply 
on  her  want  of  the  sense  of  justice. 

Without  justice  there  can  be  no  society,  so  that  jealousy 
is  an  absolutely  unsocial  quality.  The  formation  of  societies 
in  reality  presupposes  the  existence  of  true  individuality. 
Woman  has  no  faculty  for  the  affairs  of  State  or  politics,  as 
she  has  no  social  inclinations  ;  and  women's  societies,  from 
which  men  are  excluded,  are  certain  to  break  up  after  a 
short  time.  The  family  itself  is  not  really  a  social  structure  ; 
it  is  essentially  unsocial,  and  men  who  give  up  their  clubs 
and  societies  after  marriage  soon  rejoin  them.  I  had 
written  this  before  the  appearance  of  Heinrich  Schurtz' 
valuable  ethnological  work,  in  which  he  shows  that  asso- 
ciations of  men,  and  not  the  family,  form  the  beginnings  of 
society. 

'^Pascal  made  the  wonderful  remark  that  human  beings 
seek  society  only  because  they  cannot  bear  solitude  and 
wish  to  forget  themselves./  It  is  the  fact  expressed  in  these 
words  which  puts  in  harmony  my  earlier  statement  that 
women  had  not  the  faculty  of  solitude  and  my  present 
statement  that  she  is  essentially  unsociable. 

If  a  woman  possessed  an  "ego"  she  would  have  the 
sense  of  property  both  in  her  own  case  and  that  of  others. 
The  thieving  instinct,  however,  is  much  more  developed  in 
men  than  in  women.  So-called  "  kleptomaniacs "  (those 
who  steal  without  necessity)  are  almost  exclusively  women. 
Women   understand   power  and  riches  but   not   personal 


2o6  SEX  AND  CHARACTER 

property.  When  the  thefts  of  female  kleptomaniacs  are 
discovered,  the  women  defend  themselves  by  saying  that  it 
appeared  to  them  as  if  everything  belonged  to  them.  It  is 
chiefly  women  who  use  circulating  libraries,  especially  those 
who  could  quite  well  afford  to  buy  quantities  of  books  ;  but, 
as  matter  of  fact,  they  are  not  more  strongly  attracted  by 
what  they  have  bought  than  by  what  they  have  borrowed. 
In  all  these  matters  the  relation  between  individuality  and 
society  comes  into  view  ;  just  as  a  man  must  have  per- 
sonality himself  to  appreciate  the  personalities  of  others,  so 
also  he  must  acquire  a  sense  of  personal  right  in  his  own 
property  to  respect  the  rights  of  others. 

One's  name  and  a  strong  devotion  to  it  are  even  more 
dependent  on  personality  than  is  the  sense  of  property. 
The  facts  that  confront  us  with  reference  to  this  are  so 
salient  that  it  is  extraordinary  to  find  so  little  notice  taken 
of  them.  Women  are  not  bound  to  their  names  with  any 
strong  bond.  When  they  marry  they  give  up  their  own 
name  and  assume  that  of  their  husband  without  any  sense 
of  loss.  They  allow  their  husbands  and  lovers  to  call  them 
by  new  names,  delighting  in  them  ;  and  even  when  a 
woman  marries  a  man  that  she  does  not  love,  she  has  never 
been  known  to  suffer  any  psychical  shock  at  the  change  of 
name.  The  name  is  a  symbol  of  individualty  ;  it  is  only 
amongst  the  lowest  races  on  the  face  of  the  earth,  such  as 
the  bushmen  of  South  Africa,  that  there  are  no  personal 
names,  because  amongst  such  as  these  the  desire  for  distin- 
guishing individuals  from  the  general  stock  is  not  felt.  The 
fundamental  namelessness  of  the  woman  is  simply  a  sign  of 
her  undifferentiated  personality. 

An  important  observation  may  be  mentioned  here  and 
may  be  confirmed  by  every  one.  Whenever  a  man  enters 
a  place  where  a  woman  is,  and  she  observes  him,  or  hears 
his  step,  or  even  only  guesses  he  is  near,  she  becomes 
another  person.  Her  expression  and  her  pose  change  with 
incredible  swiftness;  she  "arranges  her  fringe"  and  her 
bodice,  and  rises,  or  pretends  to  be  engrossed  in  her  work. 
She  is  full  of  a  half  shameless,  half-nervous   expectation. 


MALE  AND  FEMALE  PSYCHOLOGY      207 

In  many  cases  one  is  only  in  doubt  as  to  whether  she  is 
blushing  for  her  shameless  laugh,  or  laughing  over  her 
shameless  blushing. 

\rhe  soul,  personality,  character — as  Schopenhauer  with 
marvellous  sight  recognised — are  identical  with  free-will. 
And  as  the  female  has  no  ego,  she  has  no  free-will.  Only 
a  creature  with  no  will  of  its  own,  no  character  in  the 
highest  sense,  could  be  so  easily  influenced  by  the  mere 
proximity  to  a  man  as  woman  is,  who  remains  in  functional 
dependence  on  him  instead  of  in  free  relationship  to  him\ 
Woman  is  the  best  medium,  the  male  her  best  hypnotiser. 
For  this  reason  alone  it  is  inconceivable  why  women  can 
be  considered  good  as  doctors  ;  for  many  doctors  admit 
that  their  principal  work  up  to  the  present — and  it  will 
always  be  the  same — lies  in  the  suggestive  influence  on 
their  patients. 

The  female  is  uniformly  more  easily  hypnotised  than  the 
male  throughout  the  animal  world,  and  it  may  be  seen  from 
the  following  how  closely  hypnotic  phenomena  are  related 
to  the  most  ordinary  events.  I  have  already  described,  in 
discussing  female  sympathy,  how  easy  it  is  for  laughter  or 
tears  to  be  induced  in  females.  How  impressed  she  is  by 
everything  in  the  newspapers  !  What  a  martyr  she  is  to  the 
siUiest  superstitions  !  How  eagerly  she  tries  every  remedy 
recommended  by  her  friends  ! 

Whoever  is  lacking  in  character  is  lacking  in  convictions. 
The  female,  therefore,  is  credulous,  uncritical,  and  quite  un- 
able to  understand  Protestantism.  Christians  are  Catholics 
or  Protestants  before  they  are  baptized,  but,  none  the  less, 
it  would  be  unfair  to  describe  Catholicism  as  feminine 
simply  because  it  suits  women  better.  The  distinction 
between  the  Catholic  and  Protestant  dispositions  is  a  side 
of  characterology  that  would  require  separate  treatment. 

It  has  been  exhaustively  proved  that  the  female  is  soulless 
and  possesses  neither  ego  nor  individuality,  personality  nor 
freedom,  character  nor  will.  This  conclusion  is  of  the 
highest  significance  in  psychology.  It  implies  that  the 
psychology  of  the  male  and  of  the  female  must  be  treated 


2o8  SEX  AND  CHARACTER 

separately.  A  purely  empirical  representation  of  the  psychic 
life  of  the  female  is  possible  ;  in  the  case  of  the  male,  all  the 
psychic  life  must  be  considered  with  reference  to  the  ego, 
as  Kant  foresaw. 

The  view  of  Hume  (and  Mach),  which  only  admits  that 
there  are  "  impressions "  and  "  thoughts "  (ABC  and 
a  ß  y  .  .  .),  and  which  has  almost  driven  the  psyche  out  of 
present  day  psychology,  declares  that  the  whole  world  is 
to  be  considered  exclusively  as  a  picture  in  a  reflector,  a 
sort  of  kaleidoscope  ;  it  merely  reduces  everything  to  a 
dance  of  the  "  elements,"  without  thought  or  order  ;  it  denies 
the  possibility  of  obtaining  a  secure  standpoint  for  thought ; 
it  not  only  destroys  the  idea  of  truth,  and  accordingly  of 
reality,  the  only  claims  on  which  philosophy  rests,  but 
it  also  is  to  blame  for  the  wretched  plight  of  modern 
psychology. 

This  modern  psychology  proudly  styles  itself  the  "  psy- 
chology without  the  soul,"  in  imitation  of  its  much  over- 
rated founder,  Friedrich  Albert  Lange.  I  think  I  have 
proved  in  this  work  that  without  the  acknowledgment  of  a 
soul  there  would  be  no  way  of  dealing  with  psychic  pheno- 
mena ;  just  as  much  in  the  case  of  the  male  who  has  a  soul 
as  in  the  case  of  the  female  who  is  soulless. 

Modern  psychology  is  eminently  womanish,  and  that  is 
why  this  comparative  investigation  of  the  sexes  is  so  specially 
instructive,  and  it  is  not  without  reason  that  I  have  delayed 
pointing  out  this  radical  difference  ;  it  is  only  now  that  it 
can  be  seen  what  the  acceptation  of  the  ego  implies,  and 
how  the  confusing  of  masculine  and  feminine  spiritual  life 
(in  the  broadest  and  deepest  sense)  has  been  at  the  root  of 
all  the  difficulties  and  errors  into  which  those  who  have 
sought  to  establish  a  universal  psychology  have  fallen. 

I  must  now  raise  the  question — is  a  psychology  of  the 
male  possible  as  a  science  ?  The  answer  must  be  that  it  is 
not  possible.  I  must  be  understood  to  reject  all  the  investi- 
gations of  the  experimenters,  and  those  who  z^e  still  sick 
with  the  experimental  fever  may  ask  in  wonder  if  all  these 
have  no  value  ?     Experimental  psychology  has  not  given  a 


MALE  AND  FEMALE  PSYCHOLOGY      209 

single  explanation  as  to  the  deeper  laws  of  masculine  life  ; 
it  can  be  regarded  only  as  a  series  of  sporadic  empirical 
efforts,  and  its  method  is  wrong  inasmuch  as  it  seeks  to 
reach  the  kernel  of  things  by  surface  examination,  and  as 
it  cannot  possibly  give  an  explanation  of  the  deep-seated 
source  of  all  psychical  phenomena.  When  it  has  attempted 
to  discover  the  real  nature  of  psychical  phenomena  by 
measurements  of  the  physical  phenomema  that  accompany 
them,  it  has  succeeded  in  showing  that  even  in  the  most 
favourable  cases  there  is  an  inconstancy  and  variation.-^The 
fundamental  possibility  of  reaching  the  mathematical  idea  of 
knowledge  is  that  the  data  should  be  constant.  As  the  mind 
itself  is  the  creator  of  time  and  space,  it  is  impossible  to 
expect  that  geometry  and  arithmetic  should  explain  the 
mind,  that  the  creature  should  explain  the  creator^ 

There  can  be  no  scientific  psychology  of  man,  for  the  aim 
of  psychology  is  to  derive  what  is  not  derivative,  to  prove  to 
every  man  what  his  real  nature  and  essence  are,  to  deduce 
these.  But  the  possibility  of  deducing  them  would  imply 
that  they  were  not  free.  As  soon  as  it  has  been  admitted 
that  the  conduct,  action,  nature,  of  an  individual  man  can 
be  determined  scientifically,  it  will  be  proved  that  man  has 
no  free-will.  Kant  and  Schopenhauer  understood  this  fully, 
and,  on  the  other  hand,  Hume  and  Herbart,  the  founders  of 
modern  psychology,  did  not  believe  in  free-will.  It  is  this 
dilemma  that  is  the  cause  of  the  pitiful  relation  of  modern 
psychology  to  all  fundamental  questions.  The  wild  and 
repeated  efforts  to  derive  the  will  from  psychological  factors, 
from  perception  and  feeling,  are  in  themselves  evidence  that  it 
cannot  be  taken  as  an  empirical  factor.  The  will,  like  the 
power  of  judgment,  is  associated  inevitably  with  the  existence 
of  an  ego,  or  soul.  It  is  not  a  matter  of  experience,  it  tran- 
scends experience,  and  until  psychology  recognises  this  extra- 
neous factor,  it  will  remain  no  more  than  a  methodical  annex 
of  physiology  and  biology.  If  the  soul  is  only  a  complex 
of  experiences  it  cannot  be  the  factor  that  makes  experiences 
possible.  Modern  psychology  in  reality  denies  the  existence 
of  the  soul,  but  the  soul  rejects  modern  psychology. 

o 


2IO  SEX  AND  CHARACTER 

^fhis  work  has  decided  in  favour  of  the  soul  against  the 
absurd  and  pitiable  psychology  without  a  soul.  In  fact,  it 
may  be  doubted  if,  on  the  assumption  that  the  soul  exists 
and  has  free  thought  and  free-will,  there  can  be  a  science 
of  causal  laws  and  self-imposed  rules  of  willing  and  thinking. 
I  have  no  intention  of  trying  to  inaugurate  a  new  era  of 
rational  psychology.  I  wish  to  follow  Kant  in  positing  the 
existence  of  a  soul  as  the  unifying  and  central  conception, 
without  which  any  explanation  or  description  of  psychic 
life,  however  faithful  in  its  details,  however  sympathetically 
undertaken,  must  be  wholly  unsatisfying.).  It  is  extraordinary 
how  inquirers  who  have  made  no  attehipt  to  analyse  such 
phenomena  as  shame  and  the  sense  of  guilt,  faith  and  hope, 
fear  and  repentance,  love  and  hate,  yearning  and  solitude, 
vanity  and  sensitiveness,  ambition  and  the  desire  for  immor- 
tality, have  yet  the  courage  simply  to  deny  the  ego  because 
it  does  not  flaunt  itself  like  the  colour  of  an  orange  or  the 
taste  of  a  peach.  How  can  Mach  and  Hume  account  for 
such  a  thing  as  style,  if  individuality  does  not  exist  ?  Or 
again,  consider  this  :  no  animal  is  made  afraid  by  seeing  its 
reflection  in  a  glass,  whilst  there  is  no  man  who  could  spend 
his  life  in  a  room  surrounded  with  mirrors.  Can  this  fear, 
the  fear  of  the  doppelganger,*  be  explained  on  Darwinian 
principles.  The  word  doppelganger  has  only  to  be  men- 
tioned to  raise  a  deep  dread  in  the  mind  of  any  man.  Em- 
pirical psychology  cannot  explain  this ;  it  reaches  the  depths. 
It  cannot  be  explained,  as  Mach  would  explain  the  fear  of 
little  children,  as  an  inheritance  from  some  primitive,  less 
secure  stage  of  society.  I  have  taken  this  example  only  to 
remind  the  empirical  psychologists  that  there  are  many 
things  inexplicable  on  their  hypotheses. 

Why  is  any  man  annoyed  when  he  is  described  as  a 
Wagnerite,  a  Nietzchite,  a  Herbartian,  or  so  forth  ?  He 
objects  to  be  thought  a  mere  echo.  Even  Ernst  Mach  is 
angry  in  anticipation  at  the  thought  that  some  friend  will 

*  It  is  notable  that  women  are  devoid  of  this  fear ;  female  dop- 
pelgangers  are  not  heard  of. 


MALE  AND  FEMALE  PSYCHOLOGY      211 

describe  him  as  a  Positivist,  Idealist,  or  any  other  non- 
individual  term.  This  feeling  must  not  be  confused  with 
the  results  of  the  fact  that  a  man  may  describe  himself  as  a 
Wagnerite,  and  so  forth.  The  latter  is  simply  a  deep  ap- 
proval of  Wagnerism,  because  the  approver  is  himself  a 
Wagnerite.  The  man  is  conscious  that  his  agreement  is  in 
reality  a  raising  of  the  value  of  Wagnerism.  And  so  also  a 
man  will  say  much  about  himself  that  he  would  not  permit 
another  to  say  of  hun.     As  Cyrano  de  Bergerac  put  it : 

"  Je  me  les  sers  moi-meme,  avec  assez  de  verve, 
Mais  je  ne  permets  pas  qu'un  autre  me  les  serve." 

It  cannot  be  right  to  consider  such  men  as  Pascal  and 
Newton,  on  the  one  hand,  as  men  of  the  highest  genius,  on 
the  other,  as  limited  by  a  mass  of  prejudices  which  we  of 
the  present  generation  have  long  overcome.  Is  the  present 
generation  with  its  electrical  railways  and  empirical  psy- 
chology so  much  higher  than  these  earlier  times  ?  Is  culture, 
if  culture  has  any  real  value,  to  be  compared  with  science, 
which  is  always  social  and  never  individual,  and  to  be 
measured  by  the  number  of  public  libraries  and  laboratories  ? 
Is  culture  outside  human  beings  and  not  always  in  human 
beings  ? 

It  is  in  striking  harmony  with  the  ascription  to  men  alone 
of  an  ineffable,  inexplicable  personality,  that  in  all  the 
authenticated  cases  of  double  or  multiple  personality  the 
subjects  have  been  women.  The  absolute  female  is  capable 
of  sub-division  ;  the  male,  even  to  the  most  complete  char- 
acterology  and  the  most  acute  experiment,  is  always  an 
indivisible  unit.  The  male  has  a  central  nucleus  of  his 
being  which  has  no  parts,  and  cannot  be  divided ;  the 
female  is  composite,  and  so  can  be  dissociated  and  cleft. 

And  so  it  is  most  amusing  to  hear  writers  talking  of  the 
soul  of  the  woman,  of  her  heart  and  its  mysteries,  of  the 
psyche  of  the  modern  woman.  It  seems  almost  as  if  even 
an  accoucheur  would  have  to  prove  his  capacity  by  the 
strength  of  his  belief  in  the  soul  of  women.  Most  women, 
at  least,  delight  to  hear  discussions  on  their  souls,  although 


212  SEX  AND  CHARACTER 

they  know,  so  far  as  they  can  be  said  to  know  anything,  that 
the  whole  thing  is  a  swindle.  The  woman  as  the  Sphinx  1 
Never  was  a  more  ridiculous,  a  more  audacious  fraud  per- 
petrated. Man  is  infinitely  more  mysterious,  incomparably 
more  complicated. 

If  is  only  necessary  to  look  at  the  faces  of  women  one 
passes  in  the  streets.  There  is  scarcely  one  whose  expres- 
sion could  not  at  once  be  summed  up.  The  register  of 
woman's  feelings  and  disposition  is  so  terribly  poor, 
whereas  men's  countenances  can  scarcely  be  read  after  long 
and  earnest  scrutiny. 

Finally,  I  come  to  the  question  as  to  whether  there  exists 
a  complete  parallelism  or  a  condition  of  reciprocal  inter- 
action between  mind  and  body.  In  the  case  of  the  female, 
psycho-physical  parallelism  exists  in  the  form  of  a  complete 
co-ordination  between  the  mental  and  the  physical ;  in 
women  the  capacity  for  mental  exertion  ceases  with  senile 
involution,  just  as  it  developed  in  connection  with  and  in 
subservience  to  the  sexual  instincts.  The  intelligence  of 
man  never  grows  as  old  as  that  of  the  woman,  and  it  is 
only  in  isolated  cases  that  degeneration  of  the  mind  is 
linked  with  degeneration  of  the  body.  Least  of  all  does 
mental  degeneration  accompany  the  bodily  weakness  of  old 
age  in  those  who  have  genius,  the  highest  development  of 
mental  masculinity. 

It  is  only  to  be  expected  that  the  philosophers  who  most 
strongly  argued  in  favour  of  parallelism,  such  as  Spinoza 
and  Fechner,  were  also  determinists.  In  the  case  of  the 
male,  the  free  intelligible  agent  who  by  his  own  will  can 
distinguish  between  good  and  evil,  the  existence  of  parallelism 
between  mind  and  body  must  be  rejected. 

The  question,  then,  as  to  the  proper  view  of  the  psy- 
chology of  the  sexes  may  be  taken  as  settled.  There  has  to 
be  faced,  however,  an  extraordinarily  difficult  problem  that, 
so  far  as  I  know,  has  not  even  been  stated  yet,  but  the 
answer  to  which,  none  the  less,  strongly  supports  my  view 
of  the  soullessness  of  women. 

In  the  earlier  pages  of  my  volume  I  corrtrasted  the  clarity 


MALE  AND  FEMALE  PSYCHOLOGY     213 

if-^ale  thinking  processes  with  their  vagueness  in  woman, 
nd  later  on  showed  that  the   power  of  orderly  speech,  in 
/hich  logical  judgments  are  expressed,  acts  on  women  as  a 
'iiale  sexual  character.     Whatever  is  sexually  attractive  to 
he  female  must  be  characteristic  of  the  male.     Firmness  in 
■  man's  character  makes  a  sexual  impression  on  a  woman, 
/hilst  she  is  repelled   by  the  pliant  man.     People    often 
peak  of  the  moral  influence  exerted  on  men  by  women, 
when  no  more  is  meant  than  that  women  are  striving  to 
attain  their  sexual  complements.     Women  demand  manli- 
ness from  men,  and  feel  deeply  disappointed  and  full  of 
ontempt  if  men  fail  them  in  this  respect.     However  un- 
•Tuthful  or  great  a  flirt  a   woman  may  be,  she  is  bitterly 
indignant  if  she  discover  traces  of  coquetry  or  untruthful- 
aess  in  a  man.     She  may  be  as  cowardly  as  she  likes,  but 
I  he  man  must  be  brave.     It  has  been  almost  completely 
)verlooked  that  this  is  only  a  sexual  egotism    seeking  to 
ecure  the  most  satisfactory  sexual  complement.^   From  the 
ide  of  empirical  observation,  no  stronger  proof  of  the  soul- 
essness  of  woman  could  be  drawn  than  that  she  demands  a 
ioul  in  man,  that  she  who  is  not  good  in   herself  demands 
goodness  from  him.      The  soul  is  a  masculine  character, 
oleasing  to  women  in  the  same  way  and  for  the  same  pur- 
pose as  a  masculine  body  or  a  well-trimmed  moustache.     I 
nay  be  accused  of  stating  the  case  coarsely,  but  it  is  none 
he  less  true.  <It  is  the  man's  will  that  in  the  last  resort 
nfluences  a  woman  most  powerfully,  and  she  has  a  strong 
raculty  for  perceiving  whether  a  man's  "  I  will "  means  mere 
bombast  or  actual  decision.     In  the  latter  case  the  effect  on 
her  is  prodigious^ 

How  is  it  that  woman,  who  is  soulless  herself,  can  discern 
the  soul  in  man  ?  How  can  she  judge  about  his  morality 
who  is  herself  non-moral  ?  How  can  she  grasp  his  character 
when  she  has  no  character  herself  ?  How  appreciate  his 
will  when  she  is  herself  without  will  ? 

These  difficult  problems  lie  before  us,  and  their  solutions 
must  be  placed  on  strong  foundations,  for  there  will  be 
many  attempts  to  destroy  them. 


CHAPTER  X 

MOTHERHOOD  AND  PROSTITUTION 

The  chief  objection  that  will  be  urged  against  my  views  is 
that  they  cannot  possibly  be  valid  for  all  women.  For 
some,  or  even  for  the  majority,  they  will  be  accepted  as  true, 
but  for  the  rest 

It  was  not  my  original  intention  to  deal  with  the  different 
kinds  of  women.  Women  may  be  regarded  from  many 
different  points  of  view,  and,  of  course,  care  must  be  taken 
not  to  press  too  hardly  what  is  true  for  one  extreme  type. 
If  the  word  character  be  accepted  in  its  common,  empirical 
signification,  then  there  are  differences  in  women's  char- 
acters. All  the  properties  of  the  male  character  find  re- 
markable analogies  in  the  female  sex  (an  interesting  case 
will  be  dealt  with  later  on  in  this  chapter)  ;  but  in  the  male 
the  character  is  always  deeply  rooted  in  the  sphere  of  the 
intelligible,  from  which  there  has  come  about  the  lament- 
able confusion  between  the  doctrine  of  the  soul  and  charac- 
terology.  The  characterological  differences  amongst  women 
are  not  rooted  so  deeply  that  they  can  develop  into  indi- 
viduality ;  ^nd  probably  there  is  no  female  quality  that  in 
the  course  of  the  life  of  a  woman  cannot  be  modified, 
repressed,  or  annihilated  by  the  will  of  a  man.^ 

How  far  such  differences  in  character  may  exist  in  cases 
that  have  the  same  degree  of  masculinity  or  of  femininity  I 
have  not  yet  been  at  the  pains  to  inquire.  I  have  refrained 
deliberately  from  this  task,  because  in  my  desire  to  prepare 
the  way  for  a  true  orientation  of  all  the  difficult  problems 
connected  with  my  subject  I  have  been  anxious  not  to  raise 
side  issues  or  to  burden  the  argument  with  collateral  details. 


MOTHERHOOD  AND  PROSTITUTION     215 

The  detailed  characterology  of  women  must  wait  for  a 
detailed  treatment,  but  even  this  work  has  not  totally 
neglected  the  differences  that  exist  amongst  women  ;  I  shall 
hope  to  be  acquitted  of  false  generalisations  if  it  be  remem- 
bered that  what  I  have  been  saying  relates  to  the  female 
element,  and  is  true  in  the  same  proportion  that  women 
possess  that  element.  However,  as  it  is  quite  certain  that  a 
particular  type  of  woman  will  be  brought  forward  in  oppo- 
sition to  my  conclusions,  it  is  necessary  to  consider  carefully 
that  type  and  its  contrasting  type. 

To  all  the  bad  and  defamatory  things  that  I  have  said 
about  women,  the  conception  of  woman  as  a  mother  will 
certainly  be  opposed.  But  those  who  adduce  this  argu- 
ment will  admit  the  justice  of  a  simultaneous  consideration 
of  the  type  that  is  at  the  opposite  pole  from  motherhood,  as 
only  in  this  way  is  it  possible  to  define  clearly  in  what 
motherhood  consists  and  to  delimit  it  from  other  types. 

The  type  standing  at  the  pole  opposite  to  motherhood  is 
the  prostitute.  The  contrast  is  not  any  more  mevitable  than 
the  contrast  between  man  and  woman,  and  certain  limits 
and  restrictions  will  have  to  be  made.  But  allowing  for 
these,  women  will  now  be  treated  as  falling  into  two  types, 
sometimes  having  in  them  more  of  the  one  type,  sometimes 
more  of  the  other. 

This  dichotomy  may  be  misunderstood  if  I  do  not  distm- 

guish  it  from  a  contrast  that  is  popularly  made.     It  is  often 

said  that  a  woman  should  be  both  mother  and  mistress.     I 

do  not  see  the  sense  or  the  utility  of  the  distinction  involved 

in  the  phrase.     Is  no  more  meant  by  "mistress"  than  the 

condition    which   of  necessity   must   precede  motherhood? 

If  that  is  so,  then  no  lasting  characterological  property  is 

involved.     For  the  word  "  mistress  "  tells  us  nothing  about 

a  woman  except  that  she  is  in  a  certain  relation  to  a  man. 

It  has  nothing  to  do  with  her  real  being  ;  it  is  something 

imposed  on  her  from  without.     The  conception  of  being 

loved  tells  us  nothing  about  the  nature  of  the  person  who  is 

loved.     The  condition  of  being  loved,  whether  as  mother  or 

mistress,  is  a  merely  accidental,  external  designation  of  the 


2i6  SEX  AND  CHARACTER 

individual,  whereas  the  quality  of  motherhood  is  something 
born  in  a  woman,  something  deep-seated  in  her  nature.  It 
is  this  something  that  we  must  investigate. 

That  motherhood  and  prostitution  are  at  extreme  poles 
appears  probable  simply  from  the  fact  that  motherly  women 
bear  far  more  children,  whilst  the  frivolous  have  few  child- 
dren,  and  prostitutes  are  practically  sterile.  It  must  be 
remembered,  of  course,  that  it  is  not  only  prostitutes  who 
belong  to  the  prostitute  type  ;  very  many  so-called  respect- 
able girls  and  married  women  belong  to  it.  Accurate 
Analysis  of  the  type  will  show  that  it  reaches  far  beyond  the 
mere  women  of  the  streets.  The  street-walker  differs  from 
the  respectable  coquette  and  the  celebrated  hetaira  only 
through  her  incapacity  for  differentiation,  her  complete 
want  of  memory,  and  her  habit  of  living  from  moment  to 
moment.  If  there  were  but  one  man  and  one  woman  on 
the  earth,  the  prostitute  type  would  reveal  itself  in  the  rela- 
tions of  the  woman  to  the  man. 

This  fact  of  limited  fertility  ought  by  itself  to  relieve  me 
from  the  necessity  of  comparing  my  view  of  prostitution 
with  the  popular  view  that  would  derive  what  is  really  deep- 
seated  in  the  nature  of  women  from  mere  social  conditions, 
from  the  poverty  of  women  and  the  economic  stress  of  a 
society  arranged  by  males,  from  the  difficulty  ot  women 
succeeding  in  a  respectable  career,  or  from  the  existence  of 
a  large  bachelor  class  with  the  consequent  demand  for  a 
system  of  prostitution.  To  these  suggestions  it  may  well 
be  replied  that  prostitution  is  by  no  means  confined  to  the 
poorer  classes  ;  that  women  without  any  economic  necessity 
have  frequently  given  way  to  its  appeal ;  that  there  are 
many  situations  in  shops,  offices,  post-offices,  the  telegraph 
and  telephone  services,  wherever  mere  mechanical  ability  is 
required,  where  women  are  preferred  because,  from  their 
iower  degree  of  differentiation,  their  demands  are  smaller  ; 
and  business  men  having  discovered  this  in  anticipation  of 
science,  readily  employ  them  at  a  lower  rate  of  wages. 
Young  prostitutes  have  often  quite  as  hard  an  economic 
battle  to  fight,  as  they  must  wear  expensive  clothes,  and  as 


MOTHERHOOD  AND  PROSTITUTION    217 

they  are  always  charged  excessively  high  rates  for  food  and 
lodging.  Prostitution  is  not  a  result  of  social  conditions, 
but  of  some  cause  deep  in  the  nature  of  women  ;  prostitutes 
who  have  been  "reclaimed"  frequently,  even  if  provided 
for,  return  to  their  old  way  of  life.  It  is  a  curious  circum- 
stance that  prostitutes  appear  to  be  relatively  immune  to 
certain  diseases  which  readily  affect  other  types  of  women. 
I  may  note  finally,  that  prostitution  is  not  a  modern  growth  ; 
it  has  been  known  from  the  earliest  times,  and  even  was  a 
part  of  some  ancient  religions,  as,  for  instance,  among  the 
Phoenicians. 

Prostitution  cannot  be  considered  as  a  state  into  which 
men  have  seduced  women.  The  man  may  occasionally  be 
to  blame,  as,  for  instance,  when  a  servant  is  discharged  and 
finds  herself  deserted.  But  where  there  is  no  inclination 
for  a  certain  course,  the  course  will  not  be  adopted.  Pros- 
titution is  foreign  to  the  male  element,  although  the  lives  of 
men  are  often  more  laborious  and  unpleasant  than  those  of 
women,  and  male  prostitutes  (such  as  are  found  amongst 
waiters,  barbers,  and  so  on)  are  always  advanced  sexually 
intermediate  forms.  The  disposition  for  and  inclination  to 
prostitution  is  as  organic  in  a  woman  as  is  the  capacity  for 
motherhood. 

Of  course,  I  do  not  mean  to  suggest  that,  when  any 
woman  becomes  a  prostitute,  it  is  because  of  an  irresistible, 
inborn  craving.  Probably  most  women  have  both  possi- 
bilities in  them,  the  mother  and  the  prostitute.  What  is  to 
happen  in  cases  of  doubt  depends  on  the  man  who  is  able  to 
make  the  woman  a  mother,  not  merely  by  the  physical  act 
but  by  a  single  look  at  her.  Schopenhauer  said  that  a 
man's  existence  dates  from  the  moment  when  his  father  and 
mother  fell  in  love.  That  is  not  true.  The  birth  of  a 
human  being,  ideally  considered,  dates  from  the  moment 
when  the  mother  first  saw  or  heard  the  voice  of  the  father  of 
her  child.  Biological  and  medical  science,  under  the 
influence  of  Johannes  Müller,  Th.  Bischof,  and  Darwin  have 
been  completely  opposed,  for  the  last  sixty  years,  to  the 
theory  of  "  impression."     I   may  later  attempt  to   develop 


21 8  SEX  AND  CHARACTER 

such  a  theory.  For  the  present  I  shall  remark  only  that  it 
is  not  fatal  to  the  theory  of  impression  that  it  does  not  agree 
with  the  view  which  regards  the  union  of  an  ovum  and 
spermatazoon  as  the  only  beginning  of  a  new  individual  • 
and  science  will  have  to  deal  with  it  instead  of  regarding  it 
as  being  opposed  to  all  experience  and  so  rejecting  it.  l^ 
an  a  priori  science  such  as  mathematics,  I  may  take  it  for 
granted  that  even  on  the  planet  Jupiter  2  and  2  could  not 
make  5,  but  biology  deals  only  with  propositions  of  relative 
universality.  Although  I  support  the  theory  of  the  existence 
of  such  a  power  of  impression,  it  must  not  be  supposed  that  I 
think  that  all  malformations  and  abnormalities,  or  even  any 
large  number  of  them,  are  due  to  it.  I  go  no  further  than 
to  say  that  it  is  possible  for  the  progeny  to  be  influenced  by 
a  man,  although  physical  relations  between  him  and  the 
mother  have  not  taken  place.  And  just  as  Schopenhauer 
and  Goethe  were  correct  in  their  theory  of  colour,  although 
they  were  in  opposition  to  all  the  physicists  of  the  past, 
present,  and  future,  so  Ibsen  (in  "The  Lady  from  the  Sea") 
and  Goethe  (in  "  Elective  Affinities  ")  may  be  right  against 
all  the  scientific  men  who  deal  with  the  problems  of  inheri- 
tance on  a  purely  physical  basis. 

If  a  man  has  an  influence  on  a  woman  so  great  that  her 
children  of  whom  he  is  not  the  father  resemble  him,  he 
must  be  the  absolute  sexual  complement  of  the  woman  in 
question.  If  such  cases  are  very  rare,  il  is  only  because 
there  is  not  much  chance  of  the  absolute  sexual  com- 
plements meeting,  and  this  is  no  argument  against  the 
truth  of  the  views  of  Goethe  and  Ibsen  to  which  I  have  just 
referred. 

It  is  a  rare  chance  if  a  woman  meets  a  man  so  completely 
her  sexual  complement  that  his  mere  presence  makes  him 
the  father  of  her  children.  And  so  it  is  conceivable  in  the 
case  of  many  mothers  and  prostitutes  that  their  fates  have 
been  reversed  by  accident.  On  the  other  hand,  there  must 
be  many  cases  in  which  the  woman  remains  true  to.  the 
maternal  type  without  meeting  the  necessary  man,  and  also 
cases  where  a  woman,  even  although  she  meets  the  man, 


MOTHERHOOD  AND  PROSTITUTION     219 

lay  be  driven  none  the  less  into  the  prostitute  type  by  her 
atural  instincts. 

We  have  not  to  face  the  general  occurrence  of  women  as 
ne  or  other  of  two  distinct  inborn  types,  the  maternal 
ype  and  the  prostitute.  The  reality  is  found  between  the 
wo.  There  are  certainly  no  women  absolutely  devoid  of 
he  prostitute  instinct  to  covet  being  sexually  excited  by 
uiy  stranger.  And  there  are  equally  certainly  no  women 
ibsolutely  devoid  of  all  maternal  instincts,  although  I  con- 
ess  that  I  have  found  more  cases  approaching  the  absolute 
prostitute  than  the  absolute  mother. 

/The  essence  of  motherhood  consists,  as  the  most  super- 
ficial investigation  will  reveal,  in  that  the  getting  of  the  child 
is  the  chief  object  of  life,  whereas  in  the  prostitute  sexual 
relations  in  themselves  are  the  end.  The  investigation  of 
the  subject  must  be  pursued  by  considering  the  relation  of 
each  type  to  the  child  and  to  sexual  congress.X 

Consider  the  relation  to  the  child  first.  ^The  absolute 
prostitute  thinks  only  of  the  man  ;  the  absolute  mother 
thinks  only  of  the  child.  The  best  test  case  is  the  relation 
to  the  daughter.  It  is  only  when  there  is  no  jealousy  about 
her  youth  or  greater  beauty,  no  grudging  about  the  admira- 
tion she  wins,  but  an  identification  of  herself  with  her 
daughter  so  complete  that  she  is  as  pleased  about  her 
child's  admirers  as  if  they  were  her  own,  that  a  woman  has 
a  claim  to  the  title  of  perfect  mother. 

The  absolute  mother  (if  such  existed),  who  thinks  only 
about  the  child,  would  become  a  mother  by  any  man.  It 
will  be  found  that  women  who  were  devoted  to  dolls  when 
they  were  children,  and  were  kind  and  attentive  to  children 
in  their  own  childhood,  are  least  particular  about  their 
husbands,  and  are  most  ready  to  accept  the  first  good  match 
who  takes  any  notice  of  them  and  who  satisfies  their 
parents  and  relatives.  When  such  a  maiden  has  become  a 
mother,  it  matters  not  by  whom,  she  ceases  to  pay  any 
attention  to  any  other  men.  The  absolute  prostitute,  on 
the  other  hand,  even  when  she  is  still  a  child,  dislikes 
children ;    later  on,  she  may  pretend  to  care  for  them  as 


220  SEX  AND  CHARACTER 

a  means  of  attracting  men  through  the  idea  of  mother 
and  child.  She  is  the  woman  whose  desire  is  to  please 
all  men  ;  and  since  there  is  no  such  thing  as  an  ideally 
perfect  type  of  mother,  there  are  traces  of  this  desire  to 
please  in  every  woman,  as  every  man  of  the  world  will 
admit. 

Here  we  can  trace  at  least  a  formal  resemblance  between 
the  two  types.  Both  are  careless  as  to  the  individuality  of 
their  sexual  complement.  The  one  accepts  any  possible 
man  who  can  make  her  a  mother,  and  once  that  has  been 
achieved  asks  nothing  more  ;  on  this  ground  only  is  she  to 
be  described  as  monogamous.  The  other  is  ready  to  yield 
herself  to  any  man  who  stimulates  her  erotic  desires  ;  that 
is  her  only  object.  From  this  description  of  the  two 
extreme  types  we  may  hope  to  gain  some  knowledge  of  the 
nature  of  actual  women. 

I  have  to  admit  that  the  popular  opinion  as  to  the  mono- 
gamous nature  of  women  as  opposed  to  the  essential 
polygamy  of  the  male,  an  opinion  I  long  held,  is  erroneous. 
The  contrary  is  the  case.  One  must  not  be  misled  by  the 
fact  that  a  woman  will  wait  very  long  for  a  particular  man, 
and  where  possible  will  choose  him  who  can  bestow  most 
value  on  her,  the  most  noble,  the  most  famous,  the  ideal 
prince.  Woman  is  distinguished  by  this  desire  for  value 
from  the  animals,  who  have  no  regard  for  value  either  for 
themselves  and  through  themselves,  as  in  the  case  of  a  man, 
or  for  another  and  through  another,  as  in  the  case  of  a 
woman^''  But  this  could  be  brought  forward  only  by  fools 
as  in  ariy  way  to  the  credit  of  woman,  since,  indeed,  it  shows 
most  strongly  that  she  is  devoid  of  a  feeling  of  personal 
value.  The  desire  for  this  demands  to  be  satisfied,  but  does 
not  find  satisfaction  in  the  moral  idea  of  monogamy,  /yhe 
man  is  able  to  pour  forth  value,  to  confer  it  on  the  woman ; 
he  can  give  it,  he  wishes  to  give  it,  but  he  cannot  receive  it. 
The  woman  seeks  to  create  as  much  personal  value  as  pos- 
sible for  herself,  and  so  adheres  to  the  man  who  can 
give  her  most  of  it ;  faithfulness  of  the  man,  however,  rests 
on  other  grounds.     He   regards   it  as  the    completion    of 


MOTHERHOOD  AND  PROSTITUTION    221 

ideal  love,  as  a  fulfilment,  even  although  it  is  questionable 
if  that  could  be  attained.  His  faithfulness  springs  from 
the  purely  masculine  conception  of  truth,  the  continuity 
demanded  by  the  intelligible  ego.)  One  often  hears  it  said 
that  women  are  more  faithful  than  men  ;  but  man's  faithful- 
ness is  a  coercion  which  he  exercises  on  himself,  of  his  own 
free  will,  and  with  full  consciousness.  He  may  not  adhere 
to  this  self-imposed  contract,  but  his  falling  away  from  it 
will  seem  as  a  wrong  to  himself.  When  he  breaks  his  faith 
he  has  suppressed  the  promptings  of  his  real  nature.  For 
the  woman  unfaithfulness  is  an  exciting  game,  in  which  the 
thought  of  morality  plays  no  part,  but  which  is  controlled 
only  by  the  desire  for  safety  and  reputation.  There  is  no 
wife  who  has  not  been  untrue  to  her  husband  in  thought, 
and  yet  no  woman  reproaches  herself  with  this.  For  a 
woman  pledges  her  faith  lightly  and  without  any  full  con- 
sciousness of  what  she  does,  and  breaks  it  just  as  lightly  and 
thoughtlessly  as  she  pledged  it.  The  motive  for  honouring 
a  pledge  can  be  found  only  in  man  ;  for  a  woman  does  not 
understand  the  binding  force  of  a  given  word.  The 
examples  of  female  faithfulness  that  can  be  adduced 
against  this  are  of  little  value.  They  are  either  the  slow 
result  of  the  habit  of  sexual  acquiescence,  or  a  condition 
of  actual  slavery,  dog-like,  attentive,  full  of  instinctive 
tenacious  attachment,  comparable  with  that  necessity  for 
actual  contact  which  marks  female  sympathy. 

The  conception  of  faithfulness  to  one  has  been  created 
by  man.  It  arises  from  the  masculine  idea  of  individuality 
which  remains  unchanged  by  time,  and,  therefore,  needs  as 
its  complement  always  one  and  the  same  person.  The 
conception  of  faithfulness  to  one  person  is  a  lofty  one,  and 
finds  a  worthy  expression  in  the  sacramental  marriage  of 
the  Catholic  Church.  I  am  not  going  to  discuss  the  question 
of  marriage  or  free-love.  Marriage  in  its  existing  form  is 
as  incompatible  as  free-love  with  the  highest  interpretations 
of  the  moral  law.  And  so  divorce  came  into  the  world 
with  marriage. 

None  the  less  marriage  could  have  been  invented  only  by 


222  SEX  AND  CHARACTER 

man.  No  proprietary  institution  originated  with  women. 
The  introduction  of  order  into  chaotic  sexual  relations 
could  have  come  only  through  man's  desire  for  it,  and  his 
power  to  establish  it.  There  have  been  periods  in  the 
history  of  many  primitive  races  in  which  women  had  great 
influence;  but  the  period  of  matriarchy  was  a  period  of 
polyandry. 

The  dissimilarity  in  the  relations  of  mother  and  prostitute 
to  their  child  is  rich  in  important  conclusions.  A  woman 
in  whom  the  prostitute  element  is  strong  will  perceive  her 
son's  manhood  and  always  stand  in  a  sexual  relation  to  him. 
But  as  no  woman  is  the  perfect  type  of  mother,  there  is 
something  sexual  in  the  relation  of  every  mother  and  son. 
For  this  reason,  I  chose  the  relation  of  the  mother  to  her 
daughter  and  not  to  her  son,  as  the  best  measure  of  her 
type.  There  are  many  well-known  physiological  parallels 
between  the  relations  of  a  mother  to  her  children  and  of  a 
wife  to  her  husband. 

Motherliness,  like  sexuality,  is  not  an  individual  relation. 
When  a  woman  is  motherly  the  quality  will  be  exercised 
not  only  on  the  child  of  her  own  body,  but  towards  all  men, 
although  later  on  her  interest  in  her  own  child  may  become 
all-absorbing  and  make  her  narrow,  blind,  and  unjust  in 
the  event  of  a  quarrel. 

\The  relation  of  a  motherly  girl  to  her  lover  is  interesting. 
Such  a  girl  is  inclined  to  be  motherly  towards  the  man 
she  loves,  especially  towards  that  man  who  will  afterwards 
become  the  father  of  her  child  ;  in  fact,  in  a  certain  sense 
the  man  is  her  child.  The  deepest  nature  of  the  mother- 
type  reveals  itself  in  this  identity  of  the  mother  and  loving 
wife  ;  the  mothers  form  the  enduring  root-stock  of  our  race 
from  which  the  individual  man  arises,  and  in  the  face  of 
which  he  recognises  his  own  impermanence.'\^It  is  this  idea 
which  enables  the  man  to  see  in  the  mother,  even  while 
she  is  still  a  girl,  something  eternal,  and  which  gives  the 
pregnant  woman  a  tremendous  significance.  The  enduring 
security  of  the  race  lies  in  the  mystery  of  this  figure,  in  the 
presence  of  which  man  feels  his  own  fleeting  impermanence./' 


MOTHERHOOD  AND  PROSTITUTION     223 

In  such  minutes  there  may  come  to  him  a  sense  of  freedom 
and  peace,  and  in  the  mysterious  silence  of  the  idea,  he 
may  think  that  it  is  through  the  woman  that  he  is  in  true 
relation  with  the  universe.  He  becomes  the  child  of  his 
beloved  one,  a  child  whose  mother  smiles  on  him,  under- 
stands him,  and  takes  care  of  him  (Siegfried  and  Brünn- 
hilde,  Act  III.).  But  this  does  not  last  long.  (Siegfried 
tears  himself  from  Brünnhilde).  For  a  man  only  comes  to 
his  fulness  when  he  frees  himself  from  the  race,  when  he 
raises  himself  above  it.  For  paternity  cannot  satisfy  the 
deepest  longings  of  a  man,  and  the  idea  that  he  is  to  be  lost 
in  the  race  is  repellent  to  him.  The  most  terrible  chapter 
in  the  most  comfortless  of  all  the  great  books  that  have 
been  written,  the  chapter  on  "  Death  and  its  Relation  to 
the  Indestructibility  of  our  Nature,"  in  Schopenhauer's 
"The  World  as  Will  and  Idea,"  is  where  the  permanence  of 
the  will  to  maintain  the  species  is  set  down  as  the  only  real 
permanence. 

■(it  IS  the  permanence  of  the  race  that  gives  the  mother 
her  courage  and  fearlessness  in  contrast  with  the  coward- 
liness and  fear  of  the  prostitute.  It  is  not  the  courage  of 
individuality,  the  moral  courage  arising  from  an  inner  sense 
of  freedom  and  personal  value,  but  rather  the  desire  that 
the  race  should  be  maintained  which,  acting  through  the 
mother,  protects  the  husband  and  child.\  As  courage  and 
cowardice  belong  respectively  to  the  mother  and  the 
prostitute,  so  is  it  with  that  other  pair  of  contrasting  ideas, 
hope  and  fear.  The  absolute  mother  stands  in  a  persisting 
relation  to  hope  ;  as  she  lives  on  through  the  race,  she  does 
not  quail  before  death,  whilst  the  prostitute  has  a  lasting 
fear  of  it. 

The  mother  feels  herself  in  a  sense  superior  to  the  man  ; 
she  knows  herself  to  be  his  anchor  ;  as  she  is  in  a  secure 
place,  linked  in  the  chain  of  the  generations,  she  may  be 
likened  to  a  harbour  trom  which  each  new  individual  sails 
forth  to  wander  on  the  high  seas.  From  the  moment  of 
conception  onwards  the  mother  is  psychically  and  physi- 
cally ready  to  feed  and  protect  her  child.    And  this  protective 


224  SEX  AND  CHARACTER 

superiority  extends  itself  to  her  lover  ;  she  understands  all 
that  is  simple  and  naive  and  childlike  in  him,  whilst  the 
prostitute  understands  best  his  caprices  and  refinements, 
^he  mother  has  the  craving  to  teach  her  child,  to  give  him 
everything,  even  when  the  child  is  represented  by  the  lover; 
the  prostitute  strives  to  impose  herself  on  the  man,  to 
receive  everything  from  him.  The  mother  as  the  upholder 
of  the  race  is  friendly  to  all  its  members  ;  it  is  only  when 
there  is  an  exclusive  choice  to  be  made  between  her  child 
and  others  that  she  becomes  hard  and  relentless ;  and  so 
she  can  be  both  more  full  of  love  and  more  bitter  than 
the  prostitute.'> 

The  mother  is  in  complete  relation  with  the  continuity  of 
the  race ;  the  prostitute  is  completely  outside  it.  ^The 
mother  is  the  sole  advocate  and  priestess  of  the  race^  The 
will  of  the  race  to  live  is  embodied  in  her,  whilst  the  exist- 
ence of  the  prostitute  shows  that  Schopenhauer  was  pushing 
a  generalisation  too  far  when  he  declared  that  all  sexuality 
had  relation  only  to  the  future  generation.  That  the  mother 
cares  only  for  the  life  of  her  own  race  is  plain  from  the  absence 
of  consideration  for  animals  shown  by  the  best  of  mothers. 
A  good  mother,  with  the  greatest  peace  of  mind  and  content, 
will  slaughter  fowl  after  fowl  for  her  family.  The  mother  of 
children  is  a  cruel  step-mother  to  all  other  living  things. 

Another  striking  aspect  of  the  mother's  relation  to  the 
preservation  of  the  race  reveals  itself  in  the  matter  of  food. 
She  cannot  bear  to  see  food  wasted,  however  little  may  be 
left  over  ;  whilst  the  prostitute  wilfully  squanders  the  quan- 
tities of  food  and  drink  she  demands.  The  mother  is  stingy 
and  mean  ;  the  prostitute  open-handed  and  lavish,  (^he 
mother's  object  in  life  is  to  preserve  the  race,  and  her  delight 
is  to  see  her  children  eat  and  to  encourage  their  appetites. 
And  so  she  becomes  the  good  housekeeper.  Ceres  was  a 
good  mother,  a  fact  expressed  in  her  Greek  name,  Demeter. 
The  mother  takes  care  of  the  body,  but  does  not  trouble 
about  the  mind.*     The  relation  between  mother  and  child 

(*^^ Compare  the  conversation  in  Ibsen*s  "Peer  Gynt,"  Act  ii., 


MOTHERHOOD  AND  PROSTITUTION    225 

remains  material  from  the  kissing  and  hugging  of  childhood 
to  the  protective  care  of  maturity.  All  her  devotion  is  for 
the  success  and  prosperity  of  her  child  in  material  things.) 

Maternal  love,  then,  cannot  be  truly  represented  as  resting 
on  moral  grounds.  Let  any  one  ask  himself  if  he  does 
not  believe  that  his  mother's  love  would  not  be  just  as  great 
for  him  if  he  were  a  totally  different  person.  The  indi- 
viduality of  the  child  has  no  part  in  the  maternal  love  ; 
the  mere  fact  of  its  being  her  own  child  is  sufficient,  and  so 
the  love  cannot  be  regarded  as  moral.  In  the  love  of  a 
man  for  a  woman,  or  between  persons  of  the  same  sex, 
there  is  always  some  reference  to  the  personal  qualities  of 
the  individual ;  a  mother's  love  extends  itself  indifferently  to 
anything  that  she  has  borne.  It  destroys  tlje  moral  con- 
ception if  we  realise  that  the  love  of  a  mother  for  her  child 
remains  the  same  whether  the  child  becomes  a  saint  or  a 
sinner,  a  king  or  a  beggar,  an  angel  or  a  fiend.  Precisely 
the  same  conclusion  will  be  reached  from  reflecting  how 
children  think  that  they  have  a  claim  on  their  mother's  love 
simply  because  she  is  their  mother,  "paternal  love  is  non- 
moral  because  it  has  no  relation  to  the  individuality  of  the 
being  on  which  it  is  bestowed,  and  there  can  be  an  ethical 
relation  only  between  two  individualities^  The  relation  of 
mother  and  child  is  always  a  kind  of  physical  reflex.  If  the 
little  one  suddenly  screams  or  cries  when  the  mother  is  in 
the  next  room,  she  will  at  once  rush  to  it  as  if  she  herself 
had  been  hurt ;  and,  as  the  children  grow  up,  every  wish  or 
trouble  of  theirs  is  directly  assumed  and  shared  by  the 
mother  as  if  they  were  her  own.  There  is  an  unbreakable 
link  between  the  mother  and  child,  physical,  like  the  cord 
that  united  the  two  before  childbirth.  This  is  the  real 
nature  of  the  maternal  relation  ;  and,  for  my  part,  I  protest 

between  the  father  of  Solveig  and  Aase  (perhaps  the  best-drawn 
mother  in  all  literature)  when  they  were  discussing  the  search  for 
their  son  : 

Aase.   "  We  shall  find  him." 

Her  Husband.  "  And  save  his  soul." 

Aase,  "  And  his  body." 


226  SEX  AND  CHARACTER 

against  the  fashion  in  which  it  is  praised,  its  very  indis- 
criminate character  being  made  a  merit.  I  believe  myself 
that  many  great  artists  have  recognised  this,  but  have  chosen 
to  be  silent  about  it.  The  extraordinary  over-praising  of 
Raphael  is  losing  ground,  and  the  singers  of  maternal  love 
are  no  higher  than  Fischart  or  Richepin. 

Maternal  love  is  an  instinctive  and  natural  impulse,  and 
animals  possess  it  in  a  degree  as  high  as  that  of  human 
beings.  This  alone  is  enough  to  show  that  it  is  not  true 
love,  that  it  is  not  of  moral  origin  ;  for  all  morality  proceeds 
from  the  intelligible  character  which  animals,  having  no 
free  will,  do  not  possess,  ^he  ethical  imperative  can  be 
heard  only  by  a  rational  creature  ;  there  is  no  such  thing  as 
natural  morality,  for  all  morality  must  be  self-conscious> 

Her  position  outside  the  mere  preservation  of  the  race, 
the  fact  that  she  is  not  merely  the  channel  and  the  indifferent 
protector  of  the  chain  of  beings  that  passes  through  her, 
place  the  prostitute  in  a  sense  above  the  mother,  so  far  at 
least  as  it  is  possible  to  speak  of  higher  or  lower  from  the 
ethical  point  of  view  when  women  are  being  discussed. 

The  matron  whose  whole  time  is  taken  up  in  looking  after 
her  husband  and  children,  who  is  working  in,  or  superin- 
tending the  work  of,  the  house,  garden,  or  other  forms  of 
labour,  ranks  intellectually  very  low.  The  most  highly- 
developed  women  mentally,  those  who  have  been  lauded  in 
poetry,  belong  to  the  prostitute  category ;  to  these,  the 
Aspasia-type,  must  be  added  the  women  of  the  romantic 
school,  foremost  among  whom  must  be  placed  Karoline 
Michaelis-Böhmer-Forster-Schlegel-Schelling. 

It  coincides  with  what  has  been  said  that  only  those  men 
are  sexually  attracted  by  the  mother-type  who  have  no  desire 
for  mental  productivity.  The  man  whose  fatherhood  is  con- 
fined to  the  children  of  his  loins  is  he  whom  we  should 
expect  to  choose  the  motherly  productive  woman.  Great 
men  have  always  preferred  women  of  the  prostitute  type.* 
Their  choice  falls  on  the  sterile  woman,  and,  if   there   is 

*  Wherever  I  am  using  this  term  I  refer,  of  course,  not  merely 
to  mercenary  women  of  the  streets. 


MOTHERHOOD  AND  PROSTITUTION    227 

issue,  it  is  unfit  and  soon  dies  out.  Ordinary  fatherhood 
has  as  little  do  do  with  morality  as  motherhood.  It  is 
non-moral,  as  I  shall  show  in  chap.  xiv. ;  and  it  is  illo- 
gical, because  it  deals  with  illusions.  ;^o  man  ever  knows 
to  what  extent  he  is  the  father  of  his  own  child.  And  its 
duration  is  short  and  fleeting  ;  every  generation  and  every 
race  of  human  beings  soon  disappear^> 

The  wide-spread  and  exclusive  honouring  of  the' motherly 
woman,  the  type  most  upheld  as  the  one  and  only  possible 
one  for  women,  is  accordingly  quite  unjustified.  Although 
most  men  are  certain  that  every  woman  can  have  her  con- 
summation only  in  motherhood,  I  must  confess  that  the 
prostitute — not  as  a  person,  but  as  a  phenomenon — is  much 
more  estimable  in  my  opinion. 

There  are  various  causes  of  this  universal  reverence  for 
the  mother. 

One  of  the  chief  reasons  appears  to  be  that  the  mother 
seems  to  the  man  nearer  his  ideal  of  chastity  ;  but  the 
woman  who  desires  children  is  no  more  chaste  than  the 
man-coveting  prostitute. 

The  man  rewards  the  appearance  of  higher  morality  in 
the  maternal  type  by  raising  her  morally  (although  with  no 
reason)  and  socially  over  the  prostitute  type.  The  latter 
does  not  submit  to  any  valuations  of  the  man  nor  to  the 
ideal  of  chastity  which  he  seeks  for  in  the  woman  ;  secretly, 
as  the  woman  of  the  world,  lightly  as  the  demi-mondaine,  or 
flagrantly  as  the  woman  of  the  streets,  she  sets  herself  in 
opposition  to  them.  This  is  the  explanation  of  the  social 
ostracisms,  the  practical  outlawry  which  is  the  present 
almost  universal  fate  of  the  prostitute.  The  mother  readily 
submits  to  the  moral  impositions  of  man,  simply  because 
she  is  interested  only  in  the  child  and  the  preservation  of 
the  race. 

\It  is  quite  different  with  the  prostitute.  She  lives  her 
own  life  exactly  as  she  pleases,  even  although  it  may  bring 
with  it  the  punishment  of  exclusion  from  society.  She  is 
not  so  brave  as  the  mother,  it  is  true,  being  thoroughly 
cowardly  ;  but  she  has  the  correlative  of  cowardice,  impu- 


228  SEX  AND  CHARACTER 

dence,  and  she  is  not  ashamed  of  her  shamelessness.'  She 
is  naturally  inclined  to  polygamy,  and  always  ready  to 
attract  more  men  than  the  one  who  would  suffice  as  the 
founder  of  a  family.  She  gives  free  play  to  the  fulfilment 
of  her  desire,  and  feels  a  queen,  and  her  most  ardent 
wish  is  for  more  power.  Ut  is  easy  to  grieve  or  shock  the 
motherly  woman  ;  no  one  can  injure  or  offend  the  pros- 
titute ;  for  the  mother  has  her  honour  to  defend  as  the 
guardian  of  the  species,  whilst  the  prostitute  has  forsworn 
all  social  respect,  and  prides  herself  in  her  freedony  The 
qiilyjihought- that  disturbs  her  is_the  possibility  of  losing 
her  power.  She  expects,  and  cannot  think  otherwise  than 
that  every  man  wishes  to  possess  her,  that  they  think  of 
nothing  but  her,  and  live  for  her.  And  certainly  she 
possesses  the  greatest  power  over  men,  the  only  influence 
that  has  a  strong  effect  on  the  life  of  humanity  that  is  not 
ordered  by  the  regulations  of  men. 

In  this  lies  the  analogy  between  the  prostitute  and  men 
who  have  been  famous  in  politics.  As  it  is  only  once  in 
many  centuries  that  a  great  conqueror  arises,  like  Napoleon 
or  Alexander,  so  it  is  with  the  great  courtesan  ;  but  when  she 
does  appear  she  marches  triumphantly  across  the  world. 

There  is  a  relationship  between  such  men  and  courtesans 
(every  politician  is  to  a  certain  extent  a  tribune  of  the 
people,  and  that  in  itself  implies  a  kind  of  prostitution). 
They  have  the  same  feeling  for  power,  the  same  demand  to 
be  in  relations  with  all  men,  even  the  humblest.  Just  as 
the  great  conqueror  believes  that  he  confers  a  favour  on 
any  one  to  whom  he  talks,  so  also  with  the  prostitute. 
Observe  her  as  she  talks  to  a  policeman,  or  buys  something 
in  a  shop,  you  see  the  sense  of  conferring  a  favour  explicit 
in  her.  And  men  most  readily  accept  this  view  that  they 
are  receiving  favours  from  the  politician  or  prostitute  (one 
may  recall  how  a  great  genius  like  Goethe  regarded  his 
meeting  with  Napoleon  at  Erfurt ;  and  on  the  other  side  we 
have  the  myth  of  Pandora,  and  the  story  of  the  birth  of 
Venus). 

1  may  now  return  to  the  subject  of  great  men  of  action 


MOTHERHOOD  AND  PROSTITUTION    229 

which  I  opened  in  chap.  v.  Even  so  far-seeing  a  man 
as  Carlyle  has  exalted  the  man  of  action,  as,  for  instance, 
in  his  chapter  on  "The  Hero  as  King."  I  have  already 
shown  that  I  cannot  accept  such  a  view.  I  may  add  here 
that  all  great  men  of  action,  even  the  greatest  of  them,  such 
as  Caesar,  Cromwell,  Napoleon,  have  not  hesitated  to  em- 
ploy falsehood ;  that  Alexander  the  Great  did  not  hesitate 
to  defend  one  of  his  murders  by  sophistry.  But  untruth- 
fulness is  incompatible  with  genius.  The  "Memoirs  of 
Napoleon,"  written  at  St.  Helena,  are  full  of  mistatements 
and  watery  sophistry,  and  his  last  words,  that  "  he  had 
loved  only  France,"  were  an  altruistic  pose.  Napoleon,  the 
greatest  of  the  conquerors,  is  a  sufficient  proof  that  great 
men  of  action  are  criminals,  and,  therefore,  not  geniuses. 
One  can  understand  him  by  thinking  of  the  tremendous 
intensity  with  which  he  tried  to  escape  from  himself. 
There  is  this  element  in  all  the  conquerors,  great  or  small. 
Just  because  he  had  great  gifts,  greater  than  those  of  any 
emperor  before  him,  he  had  greater  difficulty  in  stifling  the 
disapproving  voice  within  him.  The  motive  of  his  ambition 
was  the  craving  to  stifle  his  better  self.  A  truly  great  man 
may  honestly  share  in  the  desire  for  admiration  or  fame 
but  personal  ambition  will  not  be  his  aim.  He  will  not  try 
to  knit  the  whole  world  to  himself  by  superficial,  transitory 
bonds,  to  heap  up  all  the  things  of  the  world  in  a  pyramid 
over  his  name.  The  man  of  action  shares  with  the  epileptic 
the  desire  to  be  in  criminal  relation  to  everything  around 
him,  to  make  them  appanages  of  his  petty  self.  (The  great 
man  feels  himself  defined  and  separate  from  the  world,  a 
monad  amongst  monads,  and,  as  a  true  microcosm,  he  feels 
the  world  already  within  him  ;  he  realises  in  the  fullest  sense 
of  personal  experience  that  he  has  a  definite,  assured,  intelli- 
gible relation  to  the  world  whole.  The  great  tribune  and 
the  great  courtesan  do  not  feel  that  they  are  marked  off 
from  the  world  ;  they  merge  with  it,  and  demand  it  all  as 
decoration  or  adornment  of  their  empirical  persons,  and 
th^y^are  jiTcapable  of  love,^ff^ectic)n^_Qrjfrie.ndshi^. 

The  kmg  of  the  fairy  tale  who  wished  to  conquer  the 


230  SEX  AND  CHARACTER 

stars  is  the  perfect  image  of  the  conqueror.  The  great 
genius  honours  himself,  and  has  not  to  hve  in  a  condition 
of  give  and  take  with  the  populace,  as  is  necessary  for  the 
politician.  The  great  politician  makes  his  voice  resound  in 
the  world,  but  he  has  also  to  sing  in  the  streets  ;  he  may 
make  the  world  his  chessboard,  but  he  has  also  to  strut  in  a 
booth  ;  he  is  no  more  a  despot  than  he  is  a  beggar  for  alms. 
He  has  to  court  the  populace,  and  here  he  joins  with  the 
prostitute.  The  politician  is  a  man  of  the  streets.  He  must 
be  completed  by  the  public.  It  is  the  masses  that  he  re- 
quires, not  real  individualities.  If  he  is  not  clever  he  tries 
to  be  rid  of  the  great  men,  or  if,  like  Napoleon,  he  is 
cunning,  he  pretends  to  honour  them  in  order  that  he  may 
make  them  harmless.  His  dependence  on  the  public  makes 
some  such  course  necessary.  A  politician  cannot  do  all 
that  he  wishes,  even  if  he  is  a  Napoleon,  and  if,  unlike 
Napoleon,  he  actually  wished  to  realise  ideals,  he  would 
soon  be  taught  better  by  the  public,  his  real  master.  The 
will  of  him  who  covets  power  is  bound. 

Every  emperor  is  conscious  of  this  relation  between  him- 
self ind  the  masses,  and  has  an  almost  instinctive  love  of 
great  assemblages  of  his  people,  or  his  army,  or  of  his 
electors.  Not  Marcus  Aurelius  or  Diocletian,  but  Kleo, 
Mark  Antony,  Themistocles,  and  Mirabeau  are  the  em- 
bodiments of  the  real  politician.  Ambition  means  going 
amongst  the  people.  The  tribune  has  to  follow  the  prosti- 
tute in  this  respect.  According  to  Emerson,  Napoleon 
used  to  go  incognito  amongst  the  people  to  excite  their 
hurrahs  and  praise.  Schiller  imagined  the  same  course  for 
his  Wallenstein. 

Hitherto  the  phenomena  of  the  great  man  of  action  have 
been  regarded  even  by  artists  and  philosophers  as  unique. 
I  think  that  my  analysis  has  shown  that  there  is  the  strongest 
resemblance  between  them  and  prostitutes.  To  see  an 
analogy  between  Antonius  (Caesar)  and  Cleopatra  may 
appear  at  first  far-fetched,  but  none  the  less  it  exists.  The 
great  man  of  action  has  to  despise  his  inner  life,  in  order 
that  he  may  live  altogether  "  in  the  world,"  and  he  must 


MOTHERHOOD  AND  PROSTITUTION    231 

perish,  like  the  things  of  the  world.  The  prostitute  abandons 
the  lasting  purpose  of  her  sex,  to  live  in  the  instincts  of  the 
moment.  The  great  prostitute  and  the  great  tribune  are 
firebrands  causing  destruction  all  around  them,  leaving 
death  and  devastation  in  their  paths,  and  pass  like  meteors 
unconnected  with  the  course  of  human  life,  indifferent  to 
its  objects,  and  soon  disappearing,  whilst  the  genius  and  the 
mother  work  for  the  future  in  silence.  ^The  prostitute  and 
the  tribune  may  be  called  the  enemies  of  God  •  they  are 
both  anti-moral  phenomena^ 

Great  men  of  action,  then,  must  be  excluded  from  the 
category  of  genius.  The  true  genius,  whether  he  be  an 
artist  or  a  philosopher,  is  always  strongly  marked  by  his 
relation  to  the  constructive  side  of  the  world. 

The  motive  that  actuates  the  prostitute  requires  further 
investigation.  The  purpose  of  the  motherly  woman  was 
easy  to  understand  ;  she  is  the  upholder  of  the  race.  But 
the  fundamental  idea  of  prostitution  is  much  more  mys- 
terious, and  no  one  can  have  meditated  long  on  the  subject 
without  often  doubting  if  it  were  possible  to  get  an  explana- 
tion. Perhaps  the  relation  of  the  two  types  to  the  sexual 
act  may  assist  the  inquiry.  I  hope  that  no  one  will  consider 
such  a  subject  below  the  dignity  of  a  philosopher.  The 
spirit  in  which  the  inquiry  is  made  is  the  chief  matter.  It 
is  at  least  clear  that  the  painters  of  Leda  and  Danäe  have 
pondered  over  the  problem,  and  many  great  writers — I 
have  in  mind  Zola's  "Confession  of  Claude,"  his  "Hortense," 
"Renee,"  and  "Nana,"  Tolstoi's  "Resurrection,"  Ibsen's 
"Hedda  Gabler,"  and  "  Rita,"  and  above  all  the  "Sonja"  of 
that  great  soul  Dostoyevski — must  have  been  thinking  of  the 
general  problem  rather  than  merely  wishing  to  describe 
particular  cases. 

The  maternal  woman  regards  the  sexual  relations  as 
means  to  an  end  ;  the  prostitute  considers  them  as  the  end 
itself.  That  sexual  congress  may  have  another  purpose 
than  mere  reproduction  is  plain,  as  many  animals  and  plants 
are  devoid  of  it.  On  the  other  hand,  in  the  animal  kingdom, 
sexual  congress  is  always  in  connection  with  reproduction, 


232  SEX  AND  CHARACTER 

and  is  never  simply  lust ;  and,  moreover,  takes  place  only 
at  times  suitable  for  breeding.  Desire  is  simply  the  means 
employed  by  nature  to  secure  the  contmuity  of  the  species. 

Although  sexual  congress  is  an  end  in  itself  for  the 
prostitute,  it  must  not  be  assumed  that  it  is  meaningless  in 
the  mother-type.  Women  who  are  sexually  anaesthetic  no 
doubt  exist  in  both  classes,  but  they  are  very  rare,  and 
many  apparent  cases  may  really  be  phenomena  of  hysteria. 

The  final  importance  attached  by  the  prostitute  to  the 
sexual  act  is  made  plain  by  the  fact  that  it  is  only  that  type 
in  which  coquetry  occurs.  Coquetry  has  invariably  a  sexual 
significance.  Its  purpose  is  to  picture  to  the  man  the 
.f?Q0Jä9if:s.t_oi _the  woman  before  it  has_ occurred,  in  order  to 
induce  him  to  make  the  conquest  an  actual  fact.  The 
readiness  of  the  type  to  coquet  with  every  man  is  an  expres- 
sion of  her  nature  ;  whether  it  proceeds  further  depends  on 
mprely  accidental  circumstances. 

[The  maternal  type  regards  the  sexual  act  as  the  beginning 
of  a  series  of  important  events,  and  so  attaches  value  to  it 
equally  with  the  prostitute,  although  in  a  different  fashion/ 
The  one  is  contented,  completed,  satisfied ;  her  life  is  made 
richer  and  of  fuller  meaning  to  her  by  it.  The  other,  for 
whom  the  act  is  everything,  the  compression  and  end  of 
all  life,  is  never  satisfied,  never  to  be  satisfied,  were  she 
visited  by  all  the  men  in  the  world. 

'  The  body  of  a  woman,  as  I  have  already  shown,  is  sexual 
'throughout,  and  the  special  sexual  acts  are  only  intensifica- 
tions of  a  distributed  sensation.  Here,  also,  the  difference 
between  the  two  types  displays  itself.  The  prostiiute  type 
'  in  coquetting  is  merely  using  the  general  sexuality  of  her 
body  as  an  end  in  itself ;  for  her  there  is  a  difference  only 
in  degree  between  flirtation  and  sexual  congress.  The 
maternal  type  is  equally  sexual,  but  with  a  different  purpose; 
all  her  life,  through  all  her  body,  she  is  being  impregnated. 
In  this  fact  lies  the  explanation  of  the  "impression  "  which 
I  referred  to  as  being  indubitable,  although  it  is  denied  by 
men  of  science  and  physicians^ 

Paternity  is  a  diffused  relation.    Many  instances,  disputed 


MOTHERHOOD  AND  PROSTITUTION    233 

by  men  of  science,  point  to  an  influence  not  brought  about 
directly  by  the  reproductive  cells.  White  women  who 
have  borne  a  child  to  a  black  man,  are  said  if  they  bear 
children  afterwards  to  white  men,  to  have  retained  enough 
impression  from  the  first  mate  to  show  an  effect  on  the 
subsequent  children.  All  such  facts,  grouped  under  the 
names  of  "  telegony,"  **  germinal  infection,"  and  so.  on, 
although  disputed  by  scientists,  speak  for  my  view.  (And 
so  also  the  motherly  woman,  throughout  her  whole  lire,  is 
impressed  by  lovers,  by  voices,  by  words,  by  inanimate 
things.  All  the  influences  that  come  to  her  she  turns  to  the 
purpose  of  her  being,  to  the  shaping  of  her  child,  and  the 
"  actual "  father  has  to  share  his  paternity  with  perhaps 
other  men  and  many  other  things.) 

The  woman  is  impregnated  not  only  through  the  genital 
tract  but  through  every  fibre  of  her  being.  All  life  makes 
an  impression  on  her  and  throws  its  image  on  her  child. 
This  universality,  in  the  purely  physical  sphere,  is  analagous 
to  genius. 
<Jt  is  quite  different  with  the  prostitute.  Whilst  the 
maternal  woman  turns  the  whole  world,  the  love  of  her 
lover,  and  all  the  impressions  that  she  receives  to  the  pur- 
poses of  the  child,  the  prostitute  absorbs  everything  for 
herself^  But  just  as  she  has  this  absorbing  need  of  the 
man,  so  the  man  can  get  something  from  her  which  he  fails 
to  find  in  the  badly  dressed,  tasteless,  pre-occupied  maternal 
type.  Something  within  him  requires  pleasure,  and  this  he 
gets  from  the  daughters  of  joy.  Unlike  the  mother,  these 
think  of  the  pleasures  of  the  world,  of  dancing,  of  dressing, 
of  theatres  and  concerts,  of  pleasure-resorts.  They  know 
the  use  of  gold,  turning  it  to  luxury  instead  of  to  comfort, 
they  flame  through  the  world,  making  all  its  ways  a 
triumphant  march  for  their  beautiful  bodies. 

The  prostitute  is  the  great  seductress  of  the  world,  the 
female  Don  Juan,  the  being  in  the  woman  that  knows  the 
art  of  love,  that  cultivates  it,  teaches  it,  and  enjoys  it. 

Very  deep-seated  differences  are  linked  with  what  I  have 
been  describing.     The  mother-woman  craves  for  respect- 


234  SEX  AND  CHARACTER 

ability  in  the  man,  not  because  she  grasps  its  value  as  an 
idea,  but  because  it  is  the  supporter  of  the  life  of  the  world. 
She  herself  works,  and  is  not  idle  like  the  prostitute  ;  she  is 
tilled  with  care  for  the  future,  and  so  requires  from  the  man 
a  corresponding  practical  responsibility,  and  will  not  seduce 
him  to  pleasure.  (The  prostitute,  on  the  other  hand,  is 
most  attracted  by  a  careless,  idle,  dissipated  man.  A  man 
that  has  lost  self-restraint  repels  the  mother-woman,  is 
attractive  to  the  prostitute.  There  are  women  who  are 
dissatisfied  with  a  son  that  is  idle  at  school  ;  there  are  others 
who  encourage  him^  The  diligent  boy  pleases  the  mother- 
woman,  the  idle  and  careless  boy  wins  approval  from  the 
prostitute  type.  This  distinction  reaches  high  up  amongst 
the  respectable  classes  of  society,  but  a  salient  example  of 
it  is  seen  in  the  fact  that  the  "  bullies  "  loved  by  women  of 
the  streets  are  usually  criminals.  The  souteneur  is  always 
a  criminal,  a  thief,  a  fraudulent  person,  or  sometimes  even 
a  murderer. 

I  am  almost  on  the  point  of  saymg  that,  however  little 
woman  is  to  be  regarded  as  immoral  (she  is  only  non- 
moral),  prostitution  stands  in  some  deep  relation  with 
crime,  whilst  motherhood  is  equally  bound  with  the  oppo- 
site tendency.  We  must  avoid  regarding  the  prostitute  as 
the  female  analogue  of  the  criminal ;  women,  as  I  have 
already  pointed  out,  are  not  criminals  ;  they  are  too  low  in 
the  moral  scale  for  that  designation.  None  the  less,  there 
is  a  constant  connection  between  the  prostitute  type  and 
crime.  The  great  courtesan  is  comparable  with  that  great 
criminal,  the  conqueror,  and  readily  enters  into  actual  rela- 
tions with  him  ;  the  petty  courtesan  entertains  the  thief  and 
/  the  pickpocket.  'vThe  mother  type  is  in  fact  the  guardian  of 
the  life  of  the  world,  the  prostitute  type  is  its  enemy^  But 
just  as  the  mother  is  in  harmony,  not  with  the  soul  but  with 
the  body,  so  the  prostitute  is  no  diabolic  destroyer  of  the 
idea,  but  only  a  corrupter  of  empirical  phenomena.  Physi- 
/  cal  life  and  physical  death,  both  of  which  are  in  intimate 
connection  with  the  sexual  act,  are  displayed  by  the  woman 
,in  her  two  capacities  of  mother  and  prostitute./ 


MOTHERHOOD  AND  PROSTITUTION    235 

It  is  siill  impossible  to  give  a  clearer  solution  than  that 
which  I  h:ive  attempted,  of  the  real  significance  of  mother- 
hood and  prostitution.  I  am  on  an  unfamiliar  path,  almost 
untrodden  by  any  earlier  wayfarer.  Religious  myths  and 
plilosophy  alike  have  been  unable  to  propound  solutions. 
I  have  found  some  clues  however.  The  anti-moral  signi- 
ficance of  prostitution  is  in  harmony  with  the  fact  that  it 
appears  only  amongst  mankind.  In  all  the  animal  kingdom 
the  females  are  used  only  for  reproduction  ;  there  are  no 
true  females  that  are  sterile.  There  are  analogies  to  prosti- 
tution, however,  amongst  male  animals  ;  one  has  only  to 
think  of  the  display  and  decoration  of  the  peacock,  of  tne 
shining  glow-worm,  of  singing  birds,  of  the  love  dances  of 
many  male  birds.  These  secondary  sexual  manifestations, 
however,  are  mere  advertisements  of  sexuality. 

Prostitution  is  a  human  phenomenon  ;  animals  and 
plants  are  non-moral  ;  they  are  never  disposed  to  immo- 
rality and  possess  only  motherhood.  Here  is  a  deep  secret, 
hidden  in  the  nature  and  origin  of  mankind.  I  ought  to 
correct  my  earlier  exposition  by  insisting  that  I  have  come 
to  regard  the  prostitute  element  as  a  possibility  in  all 
women  just  as  much  as  the  merely  animal  capacity  for 
motherhood.  It  is  something  which  penetrates  the  nature 
of  the  human  female,  something  with  which  the  most 
animal-like  mother  is  tinged,  something  which  corresponds 
in  the  human  female,  to  the  characters  that  separate  the 
human  male  from  the  animal  male.  ^Just  as  the  immoral, 
possibility  of  man  is  something  that  distinguishes  him  from 
the  male  animal/so  the  quality  of  the  prostitute  distinguishes 
the  human  female  from  the  animal  female.  I  shall  have 
something  to  say  as  to  the  general  relation  of  man  to  this 
element  in  woman,  towards  the  end  of  my  investigation, 
but  possibly  the  ultimate  origin  of  prostitution  is  a  deep 
mystery  into  which  none  can  penetrate. 


CHAPTER   XI 

EROTICS  AND  ESTHETICS 

The  arguments  which  are  in  common  use  to  justify  a  high 
opinion  of  woman  have  now  been  examined  in  all  except  a 
few  points  to  which  I  shall  recur,  from  the  point  of  view  of 
critical  philosophy,  and  have  been  controverted.  I  hope 
that  I  have  justified  my  deliberate  choice  of  ground, 
although,  indeed,  Schopenhauer's  fate  should  have  been  a 
warning  to  me.  His  depreciation  of  women  in  his  philo- 
sophical work  "On  Women," has  been  frequently  attributed 
to  the  circumstance  that  a  beautiful  Venetian  girl,  in  whose 
company  he  was,  fell  in  love  with  the  extremely  handsome 
personal  appearance  of  Byron  ;  as  if  a  low  opinion  of 
women  were  not  more  likely  to  come  to  him  who  had  had 
the  best  not  the  worst  fortune  with  them. 

The  practice  of  merely  calling  any  one  who  assails 
woman  a  misogynist,  instead  of  refuting  argument  by 
argument,  has  much  to  commend  it.  Hatred  is  never 
impartial,  and,  therefore,  to  describe  a  man  as  having  an 
animus  against  the  object  of  his  criticism,  is  at  once  to  lay 
him  open  to  the  charge  of  insincerity,  immorality,  and 
partiality,  and  one  that  can  be  made  with  a  hyperbole  of 
accusation  and  evasion  of  the  point,  which  only  equal  its 
lack  of  justification.  This  sort  of  answer  never  fails  in  its 
object,  which  is  to  exempt  the  vindicator  from  refuting  the 
actual  statements.  It  is  the  oldest  and  handiest  weapon  of 
the  large  majority  of  men,  who  never  wish  to  see  woman 
as  she  is.  No  men  who  really  think  deeply  about  women 
retain  a  high  opinion  of  them  ;  men  either  despise  women 
or  they  have  never  thought  seriously  about  them. 


EROTICS  AND  ^ESTHETICS  237 

Nähere  is  no  doubt  that  it  is  a  fallacious  method  in  a 
theoretical  argument  to  refer  to  one's  opponent's  psycho- 
logical motives  instead  of  bringing  forward  proofs  to 
controvert  his  statements^ 

It  is  not  necessary  for  me  to  say  that  in  logical  contro- 
versy the  adversaries  should  place  themselves  under  an 
impersonal  conception  of  truth,  and  their  aim  should  be  to 
reach  a  result,  irrespective  of  their  own  concrete  opinions. 
If,  however,  in  an  argument,  one  side  has  come  to  a  certain 
conclusion  by  a  logical  chain  of  reasoning,  and  the  other 
side  merely  opposes  the  conclusion  without  having  followed 
the  reasoning  process,  it  is  at  once  fair  and  appropriate  to 
examine  the  psychological  motives  which  have  induced  the 
adversaries  to  abandon  argument  for  abuse.  I  shall  now 
put  the  champions  of  women  to  the  test  and  see  how  much 
of  their  attitude  is  due  to  sentimentality,  how  much  of  it  is 
disinterested,  and  how  much  due  to  selfish  motives. 

All  objections  raised  against  those  who  despise  women 
arise  from  the  erotic  relations  in  which  man  stands  to 
woman.  This  relationship  is  absolutely  different  from  the 
purely  sexual  attraction  which  occurs  in  the  animal  world, 
and  plays  a  most  important  part  in  human  affairs.  It  is 
quite  erroneous  to  say  that  sexuality  and  eroticism,  sexual 
impulse  and  love,  are  fundamentally  one  and  the  same 
thing,  the  second  an  embellishing,  refining,  spiritualising 
sublimation  of  the  first ;  although  practically  all  medical 
men  hold  this  view,  and  even  such  men  as  Kam  and 
Schopenhauer  thought  so.  Before  I  go  into  the  reasons 
for  maintaining  the  existence  of  this  great  distinction,  I 
should  like  to  say  something  about  the  views  of  these  two 
men. 

Kant's  opinion  is  not  of  much  weight,  because  love  as 
sexual  impulse  must  have  been  as  little  known  to  him  as 
possible,  probably  less  than  in  the  case  of  any  other  man. 
He  was  so  little  erotic  that  he  never  felt  the  kindred  desire 
to  travel.*     He  represents  too  lofty  and  pure  a  type  to  speak 

*  The  association  of  these  two  desires  may  surprise  readers.  It 
rests   on    a    metaphysical    ground,    much   of  which  will  be  more 


238  SEX  AND  CHARACTER 

with  authority  on  this  matter :  his  one  passion  was  meta- 
physics. 

As  for  Schopenhauer,  he  had  just  as  Httle  idea  of  the 
higher  form  of  eroticism  ;  his  sexuality  was  of  the  gross 
order.  This  can  be  seen  from  the  following  :  Schopen- 
hauer's countenance  shows  very  little  kindliness  and  a 
good  deal  of  fierceness  (a  circumstance  which  must  have 
caused  him  great  sorrow.  There  is  no  exhibition  of  ethical 
sympathy  if  one  is  very  sorry  for  oneself.  The  most  sym- 
pathetic persons  are  those  who,  like  Kant  and  Nietzsche, 
have  no  particle  of  self-pity). 

But  it  may  be  said  with  safety  that  only  those  who  are  most 
sympathetic  are  capable  of  a  strong  passion  :  those  "  who 
take  no  interest  in  things  "  are  incapable  of  love.  This  does 
not  imply  that  they  have  diabolical  natures.  They  may,  on 
the  contrary,  stand  very  high  morally  without  knowmg 
what  their  neighbours  are  thinking  or  doing,<and  without 
having  a  sense  for  other  than  sexual  relations  with  women, 
as  was  the  case  with  Schopenhauer.  He  was  a  man  who 
knew  only  too  well  what  the  sexual  impulse  was,  but  he 
never  was  in  love  ;  if  that  were  not  so,  the  bias  in  his  famous 
work,  "  The  Metaphysics  of  Sexual  Love,"  would  be  inex- 
plicable ;  in  it  the  most  important  doctrine  is  that  the  uncon- 
scious goal  of  all  love  is  nothing  more  than  "the  formation 
of  the  next  generation.y 

This  view,  as  I  hope  to  prove,  is  false.  It  is  true  that  a 
love  entirely  without  sexuality  has  never  been  known. 
However  high  a  man   may  stand  he  is  still  a  being   with 

apparent  when  I  have  developed  my  theory  of  eroticism  further. 
Time,  like  space,  is  conceived  of  as  unlimited,  and  man,  in  his  desire 
for  freedom,  in  his  efforts  stimulated  by  his  power  of  free  will  to 
transcend  his  limits,  has  the  craving  for  unlimited  time  and  unlimited 
space.  The  desire  for  travel  is  simply  an  expression  of  this  rest- 
lessness, this  fundamental  chafing  of  the  spirit  against  its  bonds. 
But  just  as  eternity  is  not  prolonged  time,  but  the  negation  of  time, 
so  however  far  a  man  wanders,  he  can  extend  his  area  but  cannot 
abolish  space.  And  so  his  efforts  to  transcend  space  must  always 
be  heroic  failures  :  I  shall  show  that  his  eroticism  is  a  similar 
notable  failure. 


EROTICS  AND  ESTHETICS  239 

senses,  ^hat  absolutely  disposes  of  the  opposite  view  is  this : 
all  love,  as  such — without  going  into  aesthetic  principles  of 
love — is  antagonistic  to  those  elements  (of  the  relationship) 
which  press  towards  sexual  union  ;  in  fact,  such  elements 
tend  to  negate  love.  Love  and  desire  are  two  unlike, 
mutually  exclusive,  opposing  conditions,  and  during  the 
time  a  man  really  loves,  the  thought  of  physical  union  with 
the  object  of  his  love  is  insupportable.)  because  there  is 
no  hope  which  is  entirely  free  from  fear  does  not  alter  the 
fact  that  hope  and  fear  are  utterly  opposite  principles.  It 
is  just  the  same  m  the  case  of  sexual  impulse  and  love. 
The  more  erotic  a  man  is  the  less  he  will  be  troubled  with 
his  sexuality,  and  vice  versag 

If  it  be  the  case  that  there  is  no  adoration  utterly  free 
from  desire,  there  is  no  reason  why  the  two  should  be 
identified,  since  it  might  be  possible  for  a  superior  being  to 
attain  the  highest  phases  of  both.  That  person  lies,  or  has 
never  known  what  love  is,  who  says  he  loves  a  woman 
whom  he  desires ;  so  much  difference  is  there  between 
sexual  impulse  and  love.  This  is  what  makes  talk  of  love 
after  marriage  seem,  in  most  cases,  make-believe. 

,^he  following  will  show  how  obtuse  the  view  of  those  is 
who  persist,  with  unconscious  cynicism,  in  maintaining  the 
identity  of  love  and  sexual  impulse.  Sexual  attraction 
increases  with  physical  proximity  ;  love  is  strongest  in  the 
absence  of  the  loved  one  ;  it  needs  separation,  a  certain 
distance,  to  preserve  it.  In  fact,  what  all  the  travels  in  the 
world  could  not  achieve,  what  time  could  not  accomplish, 
may  be  brought  about  by  accidental,  unintentional,  physical 
contact  with  the  beloved  object,  in  which  the  sexual  im- 
pulse is  awakened,  and  which  suffices  to  kill  love  on  the 
spot.^Then,  again,  in  the  case  of  more  highly  differentiated, 
great  men,  the  type  of  girl  desired,  and  the  type  of  girl 
loved  but  never  desired,  are  always  totally  different  in  face, 
form,  and  disposition  ;  they  are  two  different  beings. 

Then  there  is  the  "  platonic  love,"  which  professors  of  psy- 
chiatry have  such  a  poor  opinion  of.  I  should  say  rather, 
there  is  only  "  platonic  "  love,  because  any  other  so-called 


240  SEX  AND  CHARACTER 

'  love  belongs  to  the  kingdom  of  the  senses  :At  is  the  love  of 
Beatrice,  the  worship  of  Madpnna  ;  the  Babylonian  woman 
is  the  symbol  of  sexual  desire.) 

Kant's  enumeration  of  th6  transcendental  ideas  of  love 
would  have  to  be  extended  if  it  is  to  be  held.  For  the 
purely  spiritual  love,  the  love  of  Plato  and  Bruno,  which  is 
absolutely  free  from  desire,  is  none  the  less  a  transcendental 
concept ;  nor  is  its  significance  as  a  concept  impaired, 
because  such  a  love  has  never  been  fully  realised. 

It  is  the  problem  put  forward  in  "  Tannhäuser."  We 
have  Tannhäuser,  Wolfram,  Venus,  and  Maria.  The  fact 
that  two  lovers,  who  have  found  each  other  once  for  all — 
Tristan  and  Isolde — choose  death  instead  of  the  bridal  bed, 
is  just  as  absolute  a  proof  of  a  higher,  maybe  metaphysical, 
something  in  mankind,  as  the  martyrdom  of  a  Giordano 

Bruno. 

"  Dir,  hohe  Liebe,  töne 
Begeistert  mein  Gesang, 
Die  mir  in  Engelschöne 
Tief  in  die  Seele  drang  ! 
Du  nahst  als  Gott  gesandte  : 
Ich  folg'  aus  holder  Fern', — 
So  führst  du  in  die  Lande, 
Wo  ewig  strahlt  dein  Stern." 

Who  is  the  object  of  such  love  ?  Is  it  woman,  as  she  has 
been  represented  in  this  work,  who  lacks  all  higher  quali- 
ties who  gets  her  value  from  another,  who  has  no  power  to 
attain  value  on  her  own  account  ?  Impossible.  It  is  the 
ideally  beautiful,  the  immaculate  woman,  who  is  loved  in 
such  high  fashion.  The  source  of  this  beauty  and  chastity 
in  women  must  now  be  found. 

The  question  as  to  whether  the  female  sex  is  the  more 
beautiful,  and  as  to  whether  it  deserves  the  title  of  "  the " 
beautiful,  has  been  much  disputed. 

It  may  be  well  to  consider  by  whom  and  how  far  woman 
is  considered  beautiful. 

It  is  well  known  that  woman  is  not  most  beautiful  m  the 
nude.  I  admit  that  in  pictures  or  statues  the  nude  female 
may  look  well.    But  the  sexual  impulse  makes  it  impossible 


EROTICS  AND  .ESTHETICS  241 

to  look  at  a  living  woman  in  a  nude  condition  with  the 
purely  critical,  unemotional  eye,  which  is  an  essential  feature 
in  judging  any  object  of  beauty.  But  apart  from  this,  an 
absolute  nude  female  figure  in  the  life  leaves  an  impression 
of  something  wanting,  an  incompleteness,  which  is  incom- 
patible with  beauty. 

A  nude  woman  may  be  beautiful  in  details,  but  the  general 
effect  is  not  beautiful ;  she  inevitably  creates  the  feeling 
that  she  is  looking  for  something,  and  this  induces  disin- 
clination rather  than  desire  in  the  spectator.  /  The  sight  of 
an  upright  female  form,  in  the  nude,  makes  most  patent 
her  purposelessness,  the  sense  of  her  purpose  in  life  being 
derived  from  something  outside  herself ;  in  the  recumbent 
position  this  feeling  is  greatly  diminished.  It  is  evident 
that  artists  have  perceived  this  in  reproducing  the  nude) 

But  even  in  the  details  of  her  body  a  woman  is  not  wholly 
beautiful,  not  even  if  she  is  a  flawless,  perfect  type  of  her 
sex.  The  genitalia  are  the  chief  difficulty  in  the  way  of 
regarding  her  as  theoretically  beautiful.  If  the  idea  were 
justified  that  man's  love  for  woman  is  the  direct  result  of  his 
sexual  impulse  ;  if  we  could  agree  with  Schopenhauer  that 
"  the  under-sized,  narrow-shouldered,  broad-hipped,  and 
short-limbed  sex  is  called  beautiful  only  because  the  male 
intellect  is  befogged  by  the  sexual  impulse,  that  impulse 
being  the  creator  of  the  conception  of  the  beauty  of  woman," 
it  would  follow  that  the  genitalia  could  not  be  excluded  from 
the  conception  of  beauty.  It  requires  no  lengthy  exposition 
to  prove  that  the  genitalia  are  not  regarded  as  beautiful,  and 
that,  therefore,  the  beauty  of  woman  cannot  be  regarded  as 
due  to  the  sexual  impulse.  In  fact,  the  sexual  impulse  is  m 
reality  opposed  to  the  conception  of  beauty.  The  man  who 
is  most  under  its  influence  has  least  sense  of  female  beauty, 
and  desires  any  woman  merely  because  she  is  a  woman.  •. 

A  woman's  nude  body  is  distasteful  to  man  because  it 
offends  his  sense  of  shame.  The  easy  superficiality  of  our 
day  has  given  colour  to  the  statement  that  the  sense  of 
shame  has  arisen  from  the  wearing  of  clothes,  and  it  has 
been  urged  that  the  objection  to  the  nude  arises  from  those 


242  SEX  AND  CHARACTER 

who  are  unnatural  and  secretly  immorally-minded.  But  a 
man  who  has  become  immorally-minded  no  longer  is 
interested  in  the  nude  as  such,  because  it  has  lost  its  in- 
fluence on  him.  He  merely  desires  and  no  longer  loves. 
AW  true  love  is  modest,  like  all  true  pity.  There  is  only 
one  case  of  shamelessness — a  declaration  of  love  the 
sincerity  of  which  a  man  is  convinced  of  in  the  moment 
he  makes  itk  This  would  represent  the  conceivable  maxi- 
mum of  shamelessness  ;  but  there  is  no  declaration  of  love 
which  is  quite  true,  and  the  stupidity  of  women  is  shown  by 
their  readiness  to  believe  such  protestations. 
■\  The  love  bestowed  by  the  man  is  the  standard  of  what  is 
/beautiful  and  what  is  hateful  in  woman./  The  conditions 
are  quite  different  in  aesthetics  from  those  in  logic  or  ethics. 
In  logic  there  is  an  abstract  truth  which  is  the  standard  of 
thought ;  in  ethics  there  is  an  ideal  good  which  furnishes 
the  criterion  of  what  ought  to  be  done,  and  the  value  of  the 
good  is  established  by  the  determination  to  link  the  will  with 
the  good,  (in  aesthetics  beauty  is  created  by  love  ;  there  is 
no  determining  law  to  love  what  is  beautiful,  and  the  beauti- 
ful does  not  present  itself  to  human  beings  with  any  im- 
perative command  to  love  it.  (And  so  there  is  no  abstract, 
no  super-individual  "right  "  taste) J 

All  beauty  is  really  more  a  projection,  an  emanation  of  the 
requirements  of  love  ;  and  so  the  beauty  of  woman  is  not 
apart  from  love,  it  is  not  an  objective  to  which  love  is 
directedA)ut  woman's  beauty  is  the  love  of  man  ;  they  are 
not  two  things,  but  one  and  the  same  thing^ 

Just  as  hatefulness  comes  from  hating,  so  love  creates 
beauty.  This  is  only  another  way  of  expressing  the  fact 
that  beauty  has  as  little  to  do  with  the  sexual  impulse  as  the 
sexual  impulse  has  to  do  with  love.  Beauty  is  something 
that  can  neither  be  felt,  touched,  nor  mixed  with  other 
things  ;  it  is  only  at  a  distance  that  it  can  be  plainly  dis- 
cerned, and  when  it  is  approached  it  withdraws  itself.  The 
sexual  impulse  which  seeks  for  sexual  union  with  woman  is 
a  denial  of  such  beauty ;  the  woman  who  has  been  possessed 
and  enjoyed,  will  never  again  be  worshipped  for  her  beauty. 


EROTICS  AND  ^STHETICS^  243 

I  now  come  to  the  second  question  :  what  are  the  inno- 
cence and  morality  of  a  woman  ? 

It  will  be  convenient  to  start  with  a  few  facts  that  concern 
the  origin  of  all  love.  /'-Bodily  cleanliness,  as  has  often  been 
remarked,  is  in  men  a  general  indication  of  morality  and 
rectitude  ;  or  at  least  it  m^  be  said  that  uncleanly  men  are 
seldom  of  high  character.)  It  may  be  noticed  that  when 
men,  who  formerly  paid  little  attention  to  bodily  cleanliness, 
begin  to  strive  for  a  higher  perfection  of  character,  they  at 
the  same  time  take  more  trouble  with  the  care  of  the  body. 
In  the  same  way,  when  men  suddenly  become  imbued  with 
passion  they  experience  a  simultaneous  desire  for  bodily 
cleanliness,  and  it  may  almost  be  said  of  them  that  only  at 
such  a  time  do  they  wash  themselves  thoroughly.  Uf  we 
now  turn  to  gifted  men,  we  shall  see  that  in  their  case  love 
frequently  begins  with  self-mortification,  humiliation,  and 
restraint.  A  moral  change  sets  in,  a  process  of  purification 
seems  to  emanate  from  the  object  loved,  even  if  her  lover 
has  never  spoken  to  her,  or  only  seen  her  a  few  times  in  the 
distance.  It  is,  then,  impossible  that  this  process  should 
have  its  origin  in  that  person  :  very  often  it  may  be  a 
bread-and-butter  miss,  a  stolid  lump,  more  often  a  sensuous 
coquette,  in  whom  no  one  can  see  the  marvellous  charac- 
teristics with  which  his  love  endows  her,  save  her  lover. 
Can  any  one  believe  that  it  is  a  concrete  person  who  is 
loved  ?  Does  she  not  in  reality  serve  as  the  starting  point 
for  incomparably  greater  emotions  than  she  could  inspire  ? 

In  love,  man  is  only  loving  himself.  Not  his  empirical 
self,  not  the  weaknesses  and  vulgarities,  not  the  failings  and 
smallnesses  which  he  outwardly  exhibits  ;  but  all  that  he 
wants  to  be,  all  that  he  ought  to  be,  his  truest,  deepest,  in- 
telligible nature,  free  from  all  fetters  of  necessity,  from  all 
taint  of  earthy 

In  his  actual  physical  existence,  this  being  is  limited  by 
space  and  time  and  by  the  shackles  of  the  senses  ;  however 
deep  he  may  look  into  himself,  he  finds  himself  damaged 
and  spotted,  and  sees  nowhere  the  image  of  speckless  purity 
for  which  he  seeks.     And  yet  there  is  nothing  he  covets  so 


244  SEX  AND  CHARACTER 

much  as  to  realise  his  own  ideal,  to  find  his  real  higher  self. 
M.nd  as  he  cannot  find  this  true  self  within  himself,  he  has 
to  seek  it  without  himself.  He  projects  his  ideal  of  an  abso- 
lutely worthy  existence,  the  ideal  that  he  is  unable  to  isolate 
within  himself,  upon  another  human  being,  and  this  act,  and 
this  alone,  is  none  other  than  love  and  the  significance  of  love. 
Only  a  person  who  has  done  wrong  and  is  conscious  of  it 
can  love,  and  so  a  child  can  never  love.  It  is  only  because 
love  represents  the  highest,  most  unattainable  goal  of  all 
longing,  because  it  cannot  be  realised  in  experience  but 
must  remain  an  idea ;  only  because  it  is  localised  on  some 
other  human  being,  and  yet  remains  at  a  distance,  so  that 
the  ideal  never  attains  its  realisation  ;  only  because  of  such 
conditions  can  love  be  associated  with  the  awakening  of  the 
desire  for  piirification,  with  the  reaching  after  a  goal  that  is 
purely  spiritual,  and  so  cannot  be  blemished  by  physical 
union  with  the  beloved  person  ;  only  thus,  is  love  the 
highest  and  strongest  effort  of  the  will  towards  the  supreme 
good  ;  only  thus  does  it  bring  the  true  being  of  man  to  a 
state  between  body  and  spirit,  between  the  senses  and  the 
moral  nature,  between  God  and  the  beasts./  <  A  human  being 
only  finds  himself  when,  in  this  fashion,  he  loves.  And 
thus  it  comes  about  that  only  when  they  love  do  many  men 
realise  the  existence  of  their  own  personality  and  of  the 
personality  of  another,  that  "  I  "  and  '*  thou  "  become  for 
them  more  than  grammatical  expressions.  And  so  also 
comes  about  the  great  part  played  in  their  love  story  by  the 
names  of  the  two  lovers.  There  is  no  doubt  but  that  it  is 
through  love  that  many  men  first  come  to  know  of  their  own 
real  nature,  and  to  be  convinced  that  they  possess  a  soul. 

It  is  this  which  makes  a  lover  desire  to  keep  his  beloved 
at  a  distance — on  no  account  to  injure  her  purity  by  contact 
with  him — in  order  to  assure  himself  of  her  and  of  his  own 
existence.  Many  an  inflexible  empiricist,  coming  under  the 
influence  of  love,  becomes  an  enthusiastic  mystic  ;  the  most 
striking  example  being  Auguste  Comte,  the  founder  of 
positivism,  whose  whole  theories  were  revolutionised  by  his 
feelings  for  Clotilde  de  Vaux. 


EROTICS  AND  ESTHETICS  245 

It  is  not  only  for  the  artist,  but  for  the  whol^  of  mankind 
that  Arno,  ergo  sum  holds  good  psychologically/ 

Love  is  a  phenomenon  of  projection  just  as' hate  is,  not  a 
phenomenon  of  equation  as  friendship  is.  The  latter  pre- 
supposes an  equality  of  both  individuals  :  ^ove  always 
implies  inequality,  disproportion/  To  endow  an  individual 
with  all  that  one  might  be  and  yet  never  can  be,  to  make 
her  ideal — that  is  love.  Beauty  is  the  symbol  of  this  act 
of  worship.  It  is  this  that  so  often  surprises  and  angers  a 
lover  when  he  is  convinced  that  beauty  does  not  imply 
morality  in  a  woman.  He  feels  that  the  nature  of  the 
offence  is  increased  by  "  such  depravity  "  being  possible  in 
conjunction  with  such  "  beauty."  He  is  not  aware  that 
the  woman  in  question  seems  beautiful  to  him  because  he 
still  loves  her  ;  otherwise  the  incongruity  between  the  ex- 
ternal and  internal  would  no  longer  pain  him. 

The  reason  an  ordinary  prostitute  can  never  seem 
beautiful  is  because  it  is  naturally  impossible  to  endow  her 
with  the  projection  of  value  ;  she  can  satisfy  only  the  taste 
of  vulgar  minds.  She  is  the  mate  of  the  worst  sort  of  men. 
In  this  we  have  the  explanation  of  a  relation  utterly  opposed 
to  morality  :  woman  in  general  is  simply  indifferent  to 
ethics,  she  is  non-moral,  and,  therefore,  unlike  the  anti- 
moral  criminal,  who  is  instinctively  disliked,  or  the  devil 
who  is  hideous  in  every  one's  imagination,  serves  as  a 
receptacle  for  projected  worthiness  ;  as  she  neither  does 
good  nor  evil,  she  neither  resists  nor  resents  this  imposition 
of  the  ideal  on  her  personality.  It  is  patent  that  woman's 
morality  is  acquired  ;  but  this  morality  is  man's,  which  he 
in  an  access  of  supreme  love  and  devotion  has  conveyed 
to  her. 

(^ince  all  beauty  is  always  only  the  constantly  renewed 
endeavour  to  embody  the  highest  form  of  value,  there  is  a 
pre-eminently  satisfymg  element  in  it,  in  the  face  of  which 
all  desire,  all  self-seeking  fade  away. 

All  forms  of  beauty  whfch  appeal  to  man,  by  reason  of 
the  aesthetic  function,  are  in  reality  also  attempts  on 
his  part  to   realise   the  ideab     Beauty  is   the   symbol   of 


246  SEX  AND  CHARACTER 

perfection  in  being)  Therefore  beauty  is  inviolable ;  it  is 
static  and  not  dynamic  ;  so  that  any  alteration  with  regard 
to  it  upsets  and  annuls  the  idea  of  it.  The  desire  of 
personal  worthiness,  the  lo^^e  of  perfection,  materialise  in 
the  idea  of  beauty.  And  so  the  beauty  of  nature  is  born,  a 
beauty  that  the  criminal  can  never  know,  as  ethics  first 
create  nature.  Thus  it  is  that  nature  always  and  every- 
where, in  its  greatest  and  smallest  forms,  gives  the  impres- 
sion of  perfection.  The  natural  law  is  only  the  mortal 
symbol  of  the  moral  law,  as  natural  beauty  is  the  mani- 
festation of  nobility  of  the  soul ;  logic  thus  becomes  the 
embodiment  of  ethics  !  Just  as  loves  creates  a  new  woman 
for  man  instead  of  the  real  woman,  so  art,  the  eroticism  of 
the  All,  creates  out  of  chaos  the  plenitude  of  forms  in  the 
universe  ;  and  just  as  there  is  no  natural  beauty  without 
form,  without  a  law  of  nature,  so  also  there  is  no  art  without 
form,  no  artistic  beauty  which  does  not  conform  to  the 
laws  of  art.  Natural  beauty  is  no  less  a  realisation  of 
artistic  beauty  than  the  natural  law  is  the  fulfilment  of  the 
moral  law,  the  natural  reflection  of  that  harmony  whose 
image  is  enthroned  in  the  soul  of  man.  The  nature  which 
the  artist  regards  as  his  teacher,  is  the  law  which  he  creates 
out  of  his  own  being^ 

I  return  to  my  own  theme  from  these  analyses  of  art, 
which  are  no  more  than  elaborations  of  the  thoughts  of 
Kant  and  Schelling  (and  of  Schiller  writing  under  their 
influence).  The  main  proposition  for  which  I  have  argued 
is  that  man's  belief  m  the  morality  of  woman,  his  projection 
of  his  own  soul  upon  her,  and  his  conception  of  the  woman 
as  beautiful,  are  one  and  the  same  thing,  the  second  being 
the  sensuous  side  of  the  first. 

jit  is  thus  intelligible,  although  an  inversion  of  the  truth, 
when,  in  morality,  a  beautiful  soul  is  spoken  of,  or  when, 
following  Shaftesbury  and  Herbart,  ethics  are  subordinated 
to  aesthetics  ;  following  Socrates  and  Plato  we  may  identify 
the  good  and  the  beautiful,  but  we  must  not  forget  that 
beauty  is  only  a  bodily  image  in  which  morality  tries  to 
represent   itself,  that    all  aesthetics    are  created  by   ethics.J 


EROTICS  AND  .ESTHETICS  247 

Every  individual  and  temporal  presentation  of  this 
attempted  incarnation  must  necessarily  be  illusory,  and  can 
have  no  more  than  a  fictitious  reality.  And  so  all  indi- 
vidual cases  of  beauty  are  impermanent  ;  the  love  that  is 
directed  to  a  woman  must  perish  with  the  age  of  the  woman. 
The  idea  of  beauty  is  the  idea  of  nature  and  is  permanent, 
whilst  every  beautiful  thing,  every  part  of  nature,  is  perish- 
able. /The  eternal  can  realise  itself  in  the  limited  and  the 
concrete  only  by  an  illusion  ;  it  is  self-deception  to  seek  the 
fulness  of  love  in  a  woman.  As  all  love  that  attaches  itself 
to  a  person  must  be  impermanent,  the  love  of  woman  is 
doomed  to  unhappiness.  All  such  love  has  this  source  of 
failure  inherent  in  it.  It  is  an  heroic  attempt  to  seek  for 
permanent  worth  where  there  is  no  worth.  The  love  that 
is  attached  to  enduring  worth  is  attached  to  the  absolute, 
to  the  idea  of  God,  whether  that  idea  be  a  pantheistic  con- 
ception of  enduring  nature,  or  remain  transcendental  ;  the 
love  that  attaches  itself  to  an  individual  thmg,  as  to  a 
woman,  must  fail.A 

/I  have  already  partly  explained  why  man  takes  this 
burden  on  himself.  Just  as  hatred  is  a  projection  of  our 
own  evil  qualities  on  other  persons  in  order  that  we  may 
stand  apart  from  them  and  hate  them  ;  just  as  the  devil 
was  invented  to  serve  as  a  vehicle  of  all  the  evil  impulses  in 
man  ;  so  love  has  the  purpose  of  helping  man  in  his  battle 
for  good,  when  he  feels  that  he  himself  is  not  strong 
enough.  Love  and  hate  are  alike  forms  of  cowardice.  In 
hate  we  picture  to  ourselves  that  our  own  hateful  qualities 
exist  in  another,  and  by  so  doing  we  feel  ourselves  partly 
freed  from  them.  In  love  we  project  what  is  good  in  us, 
and  so  having  created  a  good  and  an  evil  image  we  are 
more  able  to  compare  and  value  themy 

Lovers  seek  their  own  souls  in  the  loved  ones,  and  so 
love  is  free  from  the  limits  I  described  in  the  first  part  of 
this  book,  not  being  bound  down  by  the  conditions  of 
merely  sexual  attraction.  In  spite  of  their  real  opposition, 
there  is  an  analogy  between  erotics  and  sexuality.  Sexuality 
uses  the  woman  as   the   means  to  produce  pleasure  and 


248  SEX  AND  CHARACTER 

children  of  the  body  ;  -erotics  use  her  as  the  means  to  create 
worth  and  children  of  the  soul.  A  little  understood  con- 
ception of  Plato  is  full  of  the  deepest  meaning  :  that  love  is 
not  directed  towards  beauty,  but  towards  the  procreation  of 
beauty ;  that  it  seeks  to  win  immortality  for  the  things  of 
the  mind,  just  as  the  lower  sexual  impulse  is  directed 
towards  the  perpetuation  of  the  species/ 

It  is  more  than  a  merely  formal  analogy,  a  superficial, 
verbal  resemblance,  to  speak  of  the  fruitfulness  of  the  mind, 
of  its  conception  and  reproduction,  or,  in  the  words  of 
Plato,  to  speak  of  the  children  of  the  soul.  As  bodily  sexu- 
ality is  the  effort  of  an  organic  being  to  perpetuate  its  own 
form,  so  love  is  the  attempt  to  make  permanent  one's  own 
soul  or  individuality.  Sexuality  and  love  are  alike  the 
effort  to  realise  oneself,  the  one  by  a  bodily  image,  the 
other  by  an  image  of  the  soul.  <But  it  is  only  the  man  of 
genius  who  can  approach  this  entirely  unsensuous  love,  and 
it  is  only  he  who  seeks  to  produce  eternal  children  in  whom 
his  deepest  nature  shall  live  for  eve^'^ 

The  parallel  may  be  carried  further.  Since  Novalis  first 
called  attention  to  it,  many  have  insisted  on  the  association 
between  sexual  desire  and  cruelty.  All  that"  is  born  of 
woman  must  die.  Reproduction,  birth,  and  death  are  indis- 
solubly  associated  ;  the  thought  of  untimely  death  awakens 
sexual  desire  in  its  fiercest  form,  as  the  determination  to 
reproduce  oneself.  And  so  sexual  union,  considered  ethi- 
cally, psychologically,  and  biologically,  is  allied  to  murder  ; 
it  is  the  negation  of  the  woman  and  the  man  ;  in  its  extreme 
case  it  robs  them  of  their  consciousness  to  give  life  to  the 
child.  The  highest  form  of  eroticism,  as  much  as  the  lowest 
form  of  sexuality,  uses  the  woman  not  for  herself  but  as 
means  to  an  end — to  preserve  the  individuality  of  the  artist. 
(ij'he  artist  has  used  the  woman  merely  as  the  screen  on 
which  to  project  his  own  idea\ 

The  real  psychology  of  the  loved  woman  is  always  a 
matter  of  indifference.  In  the  moment  when  a  man  loves 
a  woman,  he  neither  understands  her  nor  wishes  to  under- 
stand her,  although  understanding  is  the  only  moral  basis 


EROTICS  AND  ^ESTHETICS  249 

of  association  in  mankind.  A  human  being  cannot  love 
another  that  he  fully  understands,  because  he  would  then 
necessarily  see  the  imperfections  which  are  an  inevitable 
part  of  the  human  individual,  and  love  can  attach  itself 
only  to  perfection/)  Love  of  a  woman  is  possible  only 
when  it  does  not  consider  her  real  qualities,  and  so  is  able 
to  replace  the  actual  psychical  reality  by  a  different  and 
quite  imaginary  reality,  ^he  attempt  to  realise  one's  ideal 
in  a  woman,  instead  of  the  woman  herself,  is  a  necessary 
destruction  of  the  empirical  personality  of  the  woman.  And 
so  the  attempt  is  cruel  to  the  woman  ;  it  is  the  egoism  of 
love  that  disregards  the  woman,  and  cares  nothing  for  her 
real  inner  life^> 

Thus  the  parallel  between  sexuality  and  love  is  complete. 
Love  is  murder.  The  sexual  impulse  destroys  the  body  and 
mind  of  the  woman,  and  the  psychical  eroticism  destroys 
her  psychical  existence.  Ordinary  sexuality  regards  the 
woman  only  as  a  means  of  gratifying  passion  or  of  begetting 
children.  The  higher  eroticism  is  merciless  to  the  woman, 
requiring  her  to  be  merely  the  vehicle  of  a  projected  per- 
sonaHty,  or  the  mother  of  psychical  children.  Love  is  not 
only  anti-logical,  as  it  denies  the  objective  truth  of  the 
woman  and  requires  only  an  illusory  image  of  her,  but  it 
is  anti-ethical  with  regard  to  her. 

I  am  far  from  despising  the  heights  to  which  this 
eroticism  may  reach,  as,  for  instance,  in  Madonna  worship. 
Who  could  blind  his  eyes  to  the  amazing  phenomenon 
presented  by  Dante  ?  It  was  an  extraordinary  transference 
of  his  own  ideal  to  the  person  of  a  concrete  woman  whom 
the  artist  had  seen  only  once  and  when  she  was  a  young 
girl,  and  who  for  all  he  knew  might  have  grown  up  into  a 
Xantippe.  (The  complete  neglect  of  whatever  worth  the 
woman  herself  might  have  had,  in  order  that  she  might 
better  serve  as  the  vehicle  of  his  projected  conception  of 
worthiness,  was  never  more  clearly  exhibitecjf^  And  the 
three-fold  immorality  of  this  higher  eroticism  becomes  more 
plain  than  ever.  It  is  an  unlimited  selfishness  with  regard 
to  the  actual  woman,  as  she  is  wholly" rejected  for  the  ideal 


250  SEX  AND  CHARACTER 

woman.  It  is  a  felony  towards  the  lover  himself,  inasmuch 
as  he  detaches  virtue  and  worthiness  from  himself ;  and  it 
is  a  deliberate  turning  away  from  the  truth,  a  preferring  of 
sham  to  reality. 

The  last  form  in  which  the  immorality  reveals  itself  is  that 
love  prevents  the  worthlessness  of  woman  from  being 
realised,  inasmuch  as  it  always  replaced  her  by  an  imaginary 
projection.  Madonna  worship  itself  is  fundamentally  im- 
moral, inasmuch  as  it  is  a  shutting  of  the  eyes  to  truth. 
The  Madonna  worship  of  the  great  artists  is  a  destruction 
of  woman,  and  is  possible  only  by  a  complete  neglect  of 
the  women  as  they  exist  in  experience,  a  replacement  of 
actuality  by  a  symbol,  a  re-creation  of  woman  to  serve  the 
purposes  of  man,  and  a  murder  of  woman  as  she  exists. 
^'  When  a  particular  man  attracts  a  particular  woman  the 
ir^fluence  is  not  his  beauty.  Only  man  has  an  instinct  for 
beauty,  and  the  ideals  of  both  manly  beauty  and  of  womanly 
beauty  have  been  created  by  man,  not  by  woman.N  The 
qualities  that  appeal  to  a  woman  are  the  signs  of  developed 
sexuality;  those  that  repel  her  are  the  qualities  of  the 
higher  mind.  Woman  is  essentially  a  phallus  worshipper, 
and  her  worship  is  permeated  with  a  fear  like  that  of  a  bird 
for  a  snake,  of  a  man  for  the  fabled  Medusa  head,  as  she 
feels  that  the  object  of  her  adoration  is  the  power  that  will 
destroy  herj 

The  course  of  my  argument  is  now  apparent.  As  logic 
and  ethics  have  a  relation  only  to  man,  it  was  not  to  be 
expected  that  woman  would  stand  in  any  better  position 
with  regard  to  aesthetics.  Esthetics  and  logic  are  closely 
interconnected,  as  is  apparent  in  philosophy,  in  mathe- 
matics, in  artistic  work,  and  in  music.  I  have  now  shown 
the  intimate  relation  of  aesthetics  to  ethics.  As  Kant 
showed,  aesthetics,  just  as  much  as  ethics  and  logic,  depend 
on  the  free  will  of  the  subject.  As  the  woman  has  not 
free  will,  she  cannot  have  the  faculty  of  projecting  beauty 
outside  herself. 

The  foregoing  involves  the  proposition  that  woman 
cannot   love.      Women    have   made   no    ideal  of  man    to 


EROTICS  AND  iESTHETICS  251 

correspond  with  the  male  conception  of  the  Madonna. 
What  woman  requires  from  man  is  not  purity,  chastity, 
morahty,  but  something  else,  -d^oman  is  incapable  of 
desiring  virtue  in  a  man^ 

It  is  almost  an  insoluble  riddle  that  woman,  herself 
incapable  of  love,  should  attract  the  love  of  man.  It  has 
seemed  to  me  a  possible  myth  or  parable,  that  in  the  begin- 
ning, when  men  became  men  by  some  miraculous  act  of 
God,  a  soul  was  bestowed  only  on  them.  Men,  when  they 
love,  are  partly  conscious  of  this  deep  injustice  to  woman, 
and  make  the  fruitless  but  heroic  effort  to  give  her  their 
own  soul.  But  such  a  speculation  is  outside  the  limits  of 
either  science  or  philosophy. 

[l  have  now  shown  what  woman  does  not  wish  ;  there 
remains  to  show  what  she  does  wish,  and  how  this  wi^h  is 
diametrically  opposed  to  the  will  of  man} 


CHAPTER   XII 

The  nature  of  woman  and  her  significance 
in  the  universe 

**  Erst  Mann  und  Weib  zusammen 
Machen  den  Menschen  aus," — Kant. 

The  further  we  go  in  the  analysis  of  woman's  claim  to 
esteem  the  more  we  must  deny  her  of  what  is  lofty  and 
noble,  great  and  beautiful.  As  this  chapter  is  about  to  take 
the  deciding  and  most  extreme  step  in  that  direction,  I 
should  like  to  make  a  few  remarks  as  to  my  position.  The 
last  thing  I  wish  to  advocate  is  the  Asiatic  standpoint  with 
regard  to  the  treatment  of  women.  Those  who  have  care- 
fully followed  my  remarks  as  to  the  injustice  that  all  forms 
of  sexuality  and  erotics  visit  on  woman  will  surely  see  that 
this  work  is  not  meant  to  plead  for  the  harem.  But  it 
is  quite  possible  to  desire  the  legal  equality  of  men  and 
women  without  believing  in  their  moral  and  intellectual 
equality,  just  as  in  condemning  to  the  utmost  any  harsh- 
ness in  the  male  treatment  of  the  female  sex,  one  does  not 
overlook  the  tremendous,  cosmic,  contrast  and  organic 
differences  between  them.  There  are  no  men  in  whom 
there  is  no  trace  of  the  transcendent,  who  are  altogether 
bad ;  and  there  is  no  woman  of  whom  that  could  truly  be 
said.  However  degraded  a  man  may  be,  he  is  immeasur- 
ably above  the  most  superior  woman,  so  much  so  that 
comparison  and  classification  of  the  two  are  impossible  ; 
but  even  so,  no  one  has  any  right  to  denounce  or  defame 
woman,  however  inferior  she  must  be  considered.  A 
true  adjustment   of  the  claims  for   legal  equality  can   be 


WOMAN  AND  HER  SIGNIFICANCE      253 

undertaken  on  no  other  basis  than  the  recognition  of  a 
complete,  deep-seated  polar  opposition  of  the  sexes.  I  trust 
that  I  may  escape  confusion  of  my  views  as  to  woman  with 
the  superficial  doctrine  of  P.  J.  Möbius — a  doctrine  only 
interesting  as  a  brave  reaction  against  the  general  tendency. 
Women  are  not  "  physiologically  weak-minded,"  and  I 
cannot  share  the  view  that  women  of  conspicuous  ability 
are  to  be  regarded  as  morbid  specimens. 

From  a  moral  point  of  view  one  should  only  be  glad  to 
recognise  in  these  women  (who  are  always  more  masculine 
than  the  rest)  the  exact  opposite  of  degeneration,  that  is  to 
say,  it  must  be  acknowledged  that  they  have  made  a  step 
forward  and  gained  a  victory  over  themselves  ;  from  the 
biological  standpoint  they  are  just  as  little  or  as  much 
phenomena  of  degeneration  as  are  womanish  men  (unethi- 
cally considered).  Intermediate  sexual  forms  are  normal, 
not  pathological  phenomena,  in  all  classes  of  organisms, 
and  their  appearance  is  no  proof  of  physical  decadence. 

/Woman  is  neither  high-minded  nor  low-minded,  strong- 
minded  nor  weak-minded.  She  is  the  opposite  of  all  these. 
Mind  cannot  be  predicated  of  her  at  all ;  she  is  mindless. 
That,  however,  does  not  imply  weak-mmdedness  in  the 
ordinary  sense  of  the  term,  the  absence  of  the  capacity  to 
"get  her  bearings"  in  ordinary  everyday  life.  Cunning, 
calculation,  "cleverness,"  are  much  more  usual  and  con- 
stant in  the  woman  than  in  the  man,  if  there  be  a  personal 
selfish  end  in  view.  A  woman  is  never  so  stupid  as  a  man 
can  be.\ 

But  has  woman  no  meaning  at  all  ?  Has  she  no  general 
purpose  in  the  scheme  of  the  world  ?  Has  she  not  a 
destiny  ;  and,  in  spite  of  all  her  senselessness  and  emptiness, 
a  significance  in  the  universe  ? 

Has  she  a  mission,  or  is  her  existence  an  accident  and 
an  absurdity  ? 

In  order  to  understand  her  meaning,  it  is  necessary  to 
start  from  a  phenomenon  which,  although  old  and  well 
recognised,  has  never  received  its  proper  meed  of  con- 
sideration.      It   is  from   nothing  more    nor  less  than   the 


254  SEX  AND  CHARACTER 

phenomenon  of  match-making  from  which  we  may  be  able 
to  infer  most  correctly  the  real  nature  of  woman. 

Its  analysis  shows  it  to  be  the  force  which  brings  together 
and  helps  forward  two  people  in  their  knowledge  of  one 
another,  which  helps  them  to  a  sexual  union,  whether  in  the 
form  of  marriage  or  not.  This  desire  to  brmg  about  an 
understanding  between  two  people  is  possessed  by  all  women 
from  their  earliest  childhood  ;  the  very  youngest  girls  are 
always  ready  to  act  as  messengers  for  their  sisters'  lovers. 
And  if  tlie  instinct  of  match-making  can  be  indulged  in  only 
after  the  particular  woman  in  question  has  brought  about 
her  own  consummation  in  marriage,  it  is  none  the  less 
present  before  that  time,  and  the  only  things  which  are  at 
work  against  it  are  her  jealousy  of  her  contemporaries,  and 
her  anxiety  about  their  chances  with  regard  to  her  lover, 
until  she  has  finally  secured  him  by  reason  of  her  money,, 
her  social  position,  and  so  forth. 

As  soon  as  women  have  got  rid  of  their  own  case  by 
their  own  marriage,  they  hasten  to  help  the  sons  and 
daughters  of  their  acquaintances  to  marry.  The  fact  that 
older  women,  in  whom  the  desire  for  sexual  satisfaction 
has  died  out,  are  such  match-makers  is  so  fully  recog- 
nised that  the  idea  has  wrongly  spread  that  they  are  the 
only  real  match-makers. 

They  urge  not  only  women  but  men  to  marry,  a  man's 
own  mother  often  being  the  most  active  and  persistent 
advocate  of  his  marriage.  It  is  the  desire  and  purpose  of 
every  mother  to  see  her  son  married,  without  any  thought 
of  his  individual  taste  ;  a  wish  which  some  have  been 
blind  enough  to  regard  as  another  charm  in  maternal 
love,  of  which  such  a  poor  account  was  given  in  an  earlier 
chapter.  It  is  possible  that  many  mothers  may  hope  that 
their  sons  should  obtain  permanent  happiness  through 
marriage,  however  unfit  they  may  be  for  it ;  but  un- 
doubtedly this  hope  is  absent  with  the  majority,  and  in 
any  case  it  is  the  match-making  instinct,  the  sheer  objection 
to  bachelordom,  which  is  the  strongest  motive  of  all. 

It    is    clear    that    women    obey    a    purely    instinctive, 


!  WOMAN  AND  HER  SIGNIFICANCE      255 

inherent  impulse,  when  they  try  to  get  their  daughters 
married. 

It  is  certainly  not  for  logical,  and  only  in  a  small  degree 
for  material  reasons,  that  they  go  to  such  lengths  to  attain 
their  ends,  and  it  is  certainly  not  because  of  any  desire  ex- 
pressed by  their  daughters  (very  often  it  is  in  direct  opposi- 
tion to  the  girl's  choice) ;  and  since  the  match-making  instinct 
is  not  confined  to  the  members  of  a  woman's  own  family, 
it  is  impossible  to  speak  of  it  as  being  part  of  the  '*  altruistic  " 
or  "  moral "  attitude  of  maternal  love  ;  although  most 
women  if  they  were  charged  with  match-making  projects 
would  undoubtedly  answer  "  that  it  is  their  duty  to  think 
of  the  future  welfare  of  their  dear  children." 

A  mother  makes  no  difference  in  arranging  a  marriage 
for  her  own  daughter  and  for  any  other  girl,  and  is  just  as 
glad  to  do  it  for  the  latter  if  it  does  not  mterfere  with  the 
interests  of  her  own  family  ;  it  is  the  same  thing,  match- 
making throughout,  and  there  is  no  psychological  difference 
in  making  a  match  for  her  own  daughter  and  doing  the 
same  thing  for  a  stranger.  I  would  even  go  so  far  as  to  say 
that  a  mother  is  not  inconsolable  if  a  «stranger,  however 
common  and  undesirable,  desires  and  seduces  her  daughter. 

The  attitude  of  one  sex  to  certain  traits  of  the  other  can 
often  be  applied  as  a  criterion  as  to  how  far  certain  pecu- 
liarities of  character  are  exclusively  the  property  of  the  one 
sex  or  are  shared  by  the  other.  So  far,  we  have  had  to  deny 
to  women  many  characters  which  they  would  gladly  claim, 
but  which  are  exclusively  masculine  ;  in  match-making^ 
however,  we  have  a  characteristic  which  is  really  and  ex- 
clusively feminine,  the  exceptions  being  either  in  the  case 
of  very  womanish  men  or  else  special  instances  which  will 
be  fully  dealt  with  later  on,  in  chap.  xiii.  Every  real  man 
will  have  nothing  to  do  with  this  instinct  in  his  wife,  even 
when  his  own  daughters,  whom  he  would  gladly  see  settled 
in  life,  are  concerned  ;  he  dislikes  and  despises  the  whole 
business,  and  leaves  it  entirely  to  his  wife,  as  being  altogether 
in  her  province.  This  is  a  striking  instance  of  a  purely 
feminine  psychical  characteristic,  being  not  only  unattractive 


256  SEX  AND  CHARACTER 

to  a  man,  but  even  repulsive  to  him  when  he  is  aware  of  it  : 
while  the  male  characteristics  in  themselves  are  sufficient 
to  please  the  female,  man  has  to  denude  woman  of  hers 
before  he  can  love  her. 

But  the  match-making  instinct  exerts  a  much  deeper  and 
more  important  influence  on  the  nature  of  woman  than  can 
be  gathered  from  the  little  I  have  said  on  this  subject.  I 
wish  now  to  draw  attention  to  woman's  attitude  at  a  play  : 
she  is  always  waiting  to  see  if  the  hero  and  heroine,  the 
lovers  in  the  piece,  will  quarrel.  This  is  nothing  but  match- 
making, and  psychologically  does  not  differ  a  hair  from  it  : 
it  is  the  ever  present  desire  to  see  the  man  and  woman 
united.  But  that  is  not  all  ;  the  tremendous  excitement 
with  which  women  await  the  crucial  point  in  a  decent  or 
indecent  book  is  due  to  nothing  less  than  the  desire  to  see 
the  sexual  union  of  the  principal  characters,  and  is  coupled 
with  an  actual  excitation  at  the  thought,  and  positive 
appreciation  of  the  force  which  is  behind  sexual  union.  It 
is  not  possible  to  state  this  formally  and  logically,  the  only 
thing  is  to  try  and  understand  how  it  is  that  the  two  things 
are  psychologically  one  with  women.  The  mother's  ex- 
citement on  her  daughter's  wedding-day  is  of  the  same 
quality  as  that  engendered  by  reading  a  story  by  Prevost,  or 
Sudermann's  **  Katzensteg."  It  is  quite  true  that  men  are 
very  interested  by  novels  which  end  in  sexual  union,  but 
in  quite  a  different  way  from  women  ;  they  thoroughly 
appreciate  the  sexual  act  in  imagination,  but  they  do  not 
follow  the  gradual  approach  of  the  two  people  concerned 
from  the  very  beginning  ;  and  their  interest  does  not  grow, 
as  woman's  does,  in  constant  proportion  to  the  reciprocal 
value  which  the  two  people  have  for  one  another. 

The  breathless  pleasure  with  which  the  various  obstacles 
are  overcome,  the  feeling  of  disappointment  at  each 
thwarting  of  the  sexual  purpose,  is  altogether  womanish 
and  unmanly  ;  but  it  is  always  present  with  woman.  She 
is  continually  on  the  watch  for  sexual  developments,  whether 
in  real  life  or  in  literature.  Has  no  one  ever  wondered 
why  women  are  so  keen  and  "  disinterested  "  about  bringing 


WOMAN  AND  HER  SIGNIFICANCE      257 

other  men  and  women  together  ?  'QThe  satisfaction  they 
derive  from  it  arises  from  a  personal  stimulus  at  the  thought 
of  the  sexual  union  of  others> 

But  the  full  extent  to  which  match-making  influences  the 
point  of  view  of  all  women  is  not  yet  fully  grasped.  On 
a  summer  evening  when  lovers  may  be  seen  in  dark 
corners  of  public  places,  or  on  the  seats  and  banks  round 
about,  it  is  always  the  women  who  wilfully  and  curiously 
try  to  see  what  is  happening,  whilst  men  who  have  to  pass 
that  way  do  so  unwillingly,  looking  the  other  way,  because 
of  a  sense  of  intrusion.  Just  in  the  same  way  it  is  women 
who  turn  in  the  streets  to  look  at  nearly  every  couple  they 
meet,  and  gaze  after  them.  This  espionage  and  turning 
round  are  none  the  less  "  match-making,"  because  they  are 
sub-conscious  acts.  If  a  man  does  not  want  to  see  a  thing 
he  turns  his  back  on  it,  and  does  not  look  round  ;  but 
women  are  glad  to  see  two  people  in  love  with  one  another, 
and  take  pleasure  in  surprising  them  in  their  love-making, 
because  of  their  innate  and  super-personal  desire  that  sexual 
union  should  occur. 

But  man,  as  was  seen  much  further  back,  only  cares  for 
that  which  has  a  positive  value.  A  woman  when  she  sees 
two  lovers  together  is  always  awaiting  developments,  that 
is  to  say,  she  expects,  anticipates,  hopes,  and  desires  an 
outcome.  I  know  an  elderly  married  woman  who  listened 
expectantly  at  the  door  for  some  time,  when  a  servant  of 
hers  had  allowed  her  sweetheart  to  come  into  her  room, 
before  ?he  walked  in  and  gave  her  notice. 

The  idea  of  union  is  always  eagerly  grasped  and  never 
repelled  whatever  form  it  may  take  (even  where  animals  are 
concerned).*  She  experiences  no  disgust  at  the  nauseating 
details  of  the  subject,  and  makes  no  attempt  to  think  of 
anything  pleasanter.  This  accounts  for  a  great  deal  of 
what  is  so  apparently  mysterious  in  the  psychic  life  of 
woman.  Her  wish  for  the  activity  of  her  own  sexual  life  is 
her  strongest  impulse,  but  it  is  only  a  special  case  of  her 

*  The  one  apparent  exception  to  this  rule  is  fully  discussed  in 
this  chapter. 

R 


258  SEX  AND  CHARACTER 

deep,  her  only  vital  interest,  the  interest  that  sexual  unions 
shall  take  place  ;  the  wish  that  as  much  of  it  as  possible 
shall  occur,  in  all  cases,  places,  and  times. 

This  universal  desire  may  either  be  concentrated  on  the 
act  itself  or  on  the  (possible)  child  ;  in  the  first  case,  the 
woman  is  of  the  prostitute  type  and  participates  merely  for 
the  sake  of  the  act ;  in  the  second,  she  is  of  the  mother  type, 
but  not  merely  with  the  idea  of  bearing  children  herself  ; 
she  desires  that  every  marriage  she  knows  of  or  has  helped 
to  bring  about  should  be  fruitful,  and  the  nearer  she  is  to 
the  absolute  mother  the  more  conspicuous  is  this  idea  ;  the 
real  mother  is  also  the  real  grandmother  (even  if  she  remains 
a  virgin  ;  Johann  Tesman's  marvellous  portrayal  of  "  Tante 
Jule"  in  Ibsen's  "  Hedda  Gabler"  is  an  example  of  what  I 
mean).  Every  real  mother  has  the  same  purpose,  that  of 
helping  on  matrimony  ;  she  is  the  mother  of  all  mankind ; 
she  welcomes  every  pregnancy. 

The  prostitute  does  not  want  other  women  to  be  with 
child,  but  to  be  prostitutes  like  herself. 

A  woman's  relations  with  married  men  show  how  she 
subordinates  her  own  sexuality  to  her  match-making  in- 
stinct, the  latter  being  the  dominant  power. 

Woman  objects  more  strongly  to  bachelordom  than  any- 
thing else,  because  she  is  altogether  a  match-maker,  and  this 
makes  her  try  to  get  men  to  marry ;  but  if  a  man  is  already 
married  she  at  once  loses  most  of  her  interest  in  him,  how- 
ever much  she  liked  him  before.  If  the  woman  herself  is 
already  married,  that  is  to  say,  when  each  man  she  meets  is 
not  a  possible  solution  to  her  own  fate,  one  would  not 
imagine  that  a  married  man  would  find  less  favour  with  her 
because  he  was  married  than  when  he  was  a  bachelor  if 
the  woman  herself  is  unfaithful  ;  but  women  seldom  carry 
on  an  intrigue  with  another  woman's  husband,  except 
when  they  wish  to  triumph  over  her  by  making  him  neglect 
her.  This  shows  that  the  disposition  of  woman  is  towards 
the  fact  of  pairing ;  when  men  are  already  paired  she 
seldom  attempts  to  make  them  unfaithful,  for  the  fact  of  their 
being  paired  has  satisfied  her  instinct. 


WOMAN  AND  HER  SIGNIFICANCE      259 

V^This  match-making  is  the  most  common  characteristic  of 
the  human  female  ;  the  wish  to  become  a  mother-in-law  is 
much  more  general  than  even  the  desire  to  become  a  mother, 
the  intensity  and  extent  of  which  is  usually  over-rate(5i 

My  readers  may  possibly  not  understand  the  emphasis  I 
have  laid  on  a  phenomenon  which  is  usually  looked  upon 
as  amusing  as  it  is  disgusting  ;  and  it  may  be  thought  that 
I  have  given  undue  importance  to  it. 

But  let  us  see  why  I  have  done  so.  Match-making  is 
essentially  the  phenomenon  of  all  others  which  gives  us  the 
key  to  the  nature  of  woman,  and  we  must  not,  as  has  always 
been  the  case,  merely  acknowledge  the  fact  and  pass  on, 
but  we  should  try  to  analyse  and  explain  it.  One  of  our 
commonest  phrases  runs  :  "  Every  woman  is  a  bit  of  a 
match-maker." 

But  we  must  remember  that  in  this,  and  nothing  else,  lies 
the  actual  essence  of  woman.  After  mature  consideration 
of  the  most  varied  types  of  women  and  with  due  regard 
to  the  special  classes  besides  those  which  I  have  dis- 
cussed, I  am  of  opinion  that  the  only  positively  general 
female  characteristic  is  that  of  match-making,<^that  is,  her 
uniform  willingness  to  further  the  idea  of  sexual  unior^. 

Any  definition  of  the  nature  of  woman  which  goes  no 
further  than  to  declare  that  she  has  the  strong  instinct  for 
her  own  union  would  be  too  narrow  ;  any  definition  that 
would  link  her  instincts  to  the  child  or  to  the  husband,  or 
to  both,  would  be  too  wide.  The  most  general  and  com- 
prehensive statement  of  the  nature  of  woman  is  that  it  is 
completely  adapted  and  disposed  for  the  special  mission  of 
aiding  and  abetting  the  bodily  union  of  the  sexes.  All 
women  are  match-makers,  and  this  property  of  the  woman 
to  be  the  advocate  of  the  idea  of  pairing  is  the  only  one 
which  is  found  in  women  of  all  ages,  in  youn^  girls,  in 
adults,  and  in  the  aged.  The  old  woman  is  no  longer 
interested  in  her  own  union,  but  she  devotes  herself  to  the 
pairing  of  others.  This  habit  of  the  old  woman  is  nothing 
new,  it  is  only  the  continuance  of  her  enduring  instinct 
surviving  the  complications  that   were   caused   when   her 


26o  SEX  AND  CHARACTER 

personal  interests  came  into  conflict  with  her  general  desire  ; 
it  is  the  now  unselfish  pursuit  of  the  impersonal  idea. 

It  is  convenient  to  recapitulate  at  this  point  what  my 
investigation  has  shown  as  to  the  sexuality  of  women.  /I 
have  shown  that  woman  is  engrossed  exclusively  by 
sexuality,  not  intermittently,  but  throughout  her  life ;  that 
her  whole  being,  bodily  and  mental,  is  nothing  but  sexu- 
ality itself.  I  added,  moreover,  that  she  was  so  constituted 
that  her  whole  body  and  being  continually  were  in  sexual 
relations  with  her  environment,  and  that  just  as  the  sexual 
organs  were  the  centre  of  woman  physically,  so  the  sexual 
idea  was  the  centre  of  her  mental  nature^  The  idea  of  pairing 
is  the  only  conception  which  has  positive  worth  for  women. 
The  woman  is  the  bearer  of  the  thought  of  the  continuity 
of  the  species.  The  high  value  which  she  attaches  to  the 
idea  of  pairing  is  not  selfish  and  individual,  it  is  super- 
individual,  and,  if  I  may  be  forgiven  the  desecration  of  the 
phrase,  it  is  the  transcendental  function  of  woman.  And 
just  as  femaleness  is  no  more  than  the  embodiment  of  the 
idea  of  pairing,  so  is  it  sexuality  in  the  abstract.  Pairing  is 
the  supreme  good  for  the  woman ;  she  seeks  to  effect  it 
always  and  everywhere.  Her  personal  sexuality  is  only  a 
special  case  of  this  universal,  generalised,  impersonal 
instinct. 

The  effort  of  woman  to  realise  this  idea  of  pairing  is  so 
fundamentally  opposed  to  that  conception  of  innocence 
and  purity,  the  higher  virginity  which  man's  erotic  nature 
has  demanded  from  women,  that  not  all  his  erotic  incense 
would  have  obscured  her  real  nature  but  for  one  factor.  I 
have  now  to  explain  this  factor  which  has  veiled  from  man 
the  true  nature  of  woman,  and  which  in  itself  is  one  of  the 
deepest  problems  of  woman,  I  mean  her  absolute  duplicity. 
Her  pairing  instinct  and  her  duplicity,  the  latter  so  great  as 
to  conceal  even  from  woman  herself  what  is  the  real 
essence  of  her  nature,  must  be  explained  together. 

All  that  may  have  seemed  like  clear  gain  is  now  again 
called  into  question.  Self-observation  was  found  lacking 
in  women,  and  yet  there  certainly  are  women  who  observe 


WOMAN  AND  HER  SIGNIFICANCE      261 

very  closely  all  that  happens  to  them.  They  were  denied 
the  love  of  truth,  and  yet  one  knows  many  women  who 
would  not  tell  a  lie  for  anything.  It  has  been  said  that 
they  are  lacking  in  consciousness  of  guilt ;  but  there  are 
many  women  who  reproach  themselves  bitterly  for  most 
trifling  matters,  besides  "  penitents "  who  mortify  their 
flesh.  Modesty  was  left  to  man,  but  what  is  to  be  said  of 
the  womanly  modesty,  that  bashfulness,  which,  according  to 
Hamerling,  only  women  have  ?  Is  there  no  foundation  for 
the  way  in  which  the  idea  has  grown  and  found  such 
acceptance  ?  And  then  again  :  Can  religion  be  absent,  in 
spite  ot  so  many  "  professing  "  women  ?  Are  we  to  exclude 
all  women  from  the  moral  purity,  all  the  womanly  virtues, 
which  poets  and  historians  have  ascribed  to  her  ?  Are  we 
to  say  that  woman  is  merely  sexual,  that  sexuality  only 
receives  its  proper  due  from  her  when  it  is  so  well  known 
that  women  are  shocked  at  the  slightest  allusion  to  sexual 
matters,  that  instead  of  giving  way  to  it  they  are  often 
irritated  and  disgusted  at  the  idea  of  impurity,  and  quite 
often  detest  sexual  union  for  themselves  and  regard  it  just 
as  many  men  do  ? 

It  is,  of  course,  manifest  that  one  and  the  same  point  is 
bound  up  in  all  these  antitheses,  and  on  the  answer  given 
to  them  depends  the  finai  and  decisive  judgment  on 
woman.  And  it  is  clear  that  if  only  one  single  female 
creature  were  really  asexual,  or  could  be  shown  to  have  a 
real  relationship  to  the  idea  of  personal  moral  worth,  every- 
thing that  I  have  said  about  woman,  its  general  value  as 
psychically  characteristic  of  the  sex,  would  be  irretrievably 
demolished,  and  the  whole  position  which  this  book  has 
taken  up  would  be  shattered  at  one  blow. 

These  apparently  contradictory  phenomena  must  be 
satisfactorily  explained,  and  it  must  be  shown  that  what  is 
at  the  bottom  ot  it  ail  and  makes  it  seem  so  equivocal  arises 
from  the  very  nature  of  woman  whicti  1  have  been  trying 
to  explain  all  along. 

In  order  to  understand  these  fallacious  contradictions 
one  must  first  of  all  remember  the  tremendous  "  accessi- 


262  SEX  AND  CHARACTER 

bility,"  to  use  another  word,  the  "  impressionability,"  of 
women,  -^heir  extraordinary  aptitude  for  anything  new, 
and  their  easy  acceptance  of  other  people's  views  have  not 
yet  been  sufficiently  emphasised  in  this  bool^ 

/As  a  rule,  the  woman  adapts  herself  to  the  man,  his 
views  become  hers,  his  likes  and  dislikes  are  shared  by 
her,  every  word  he  says  is  an  incentive  to  her,  and  the 
stronger  his  sexual  influence  on  her  the  more  this  is  so. 
Woman  does  not  perceive  that  this  influence  which 
man  has  on  her  causes  her  to  deviate  from  the  line 
of  her  own  development  ;  she  does  not  look  upon  it  as  a 
sort  of  unwarrantable  intrusion  ;  she  does  not  try  to  shake 
off  what  is  really  an  invasion  of  her  private  life  ;  she  is  not 
ashamed  of  being  receptive  ;  on  the  contrary,  she  is  really 
pleased  when  she  can  be  so,  and  prefer^  man  to  mould  her 
mentally.  She  rejoices  in  being  dependent,  and  her 
expectatioiis-fr£)m.m.an  resolve  themselves  into  the  moment 
when  she  may_bg_p£if£cily43assi-ve. 

But  it  is  not  only  from  her  lover  (although  she  would 
like  that  best),  but  also  from  her  father  and  mother,  uncles 
and  aunts,  brothers  and  sisters,  near  relations  and  distant  ac- 
quaintances, that  a  woman  takes  what  she  thinks  and  believes, 
being  only  too  glad  to  get  her  opinions  "  ready  made." 

It  is  not  only  inexperienced  girls  but  even  elderly  and 
married  women  who  copy  each  other  in  everj'thing,  from 
the  nice  new  dress  or  pretty  coiffure  down  to  the  places 
where  they  get  their  things,  and  the  very  recipes  by  which 
they  cook. 

And  it  never  seems  to  occur  to  them  that  they  are  doing 
something  derogatory  on  their  part,  as  it  ought  to  do  if 
they  possessed  an  individuality  of  their  own  and  strove  to 
work  out  their  own  salvation.  A  woman's  thoughts  and 
actions  have  no  definite,  independent  relations  to  things  in 
themselves ;  they  are  not  the  result  of  the  reaction  of  her 
individuality  to  the  world.  They  accept  what  is  imposed 
on  them  gladly,  and  adhere  to  it  with  the  greatest  firmness. 
That  is  why  woman  is  so  intolerant  when  there  has  been  a 
breach   of  conventional  laws.     I  must  guote  an  amusing 


WOMAN  AND  HER  SIGNIFICANCE      263 

instance,  bearing  on  this  side  of  woman's  character,  from 
Herbert  Spencer.  It  is  the  custom  in  various  tribes  of 
Indians  in  North  and  South  America  for  the  men  to  hunt 
and  fight  and  leave  all  the  laborious  and  menial  tasks  to 
their  wives.  The  Dakotan  women  are  so  imbued  with  the 
idea  of  the  reasonableness  and  fitness  of  this  arrangement 
that,  instead  of  feeling  injured  by  it,  the  greatest  insult  that 
one  of  these  women  can  offer  to  another  would  be  implied 
in  some  such  words  as  follows  ;  "  You  disgraceful  creature. 
...  I  saw  your  husband  carrying  home  wood  for  the  fires. 
What  was  his  wife  doing  that  he  had  to  demean  himself  by 
doing  woman's  work  ?  " 

<^  The  extraordinary  way  in  which  woman  can  be  influenced 
b^  external  agencies  is  similar  in  its  nature  to  her  suggesti- 
bility, which  is  far  greater  and  more  general  than  man's ; 
they  are  both  in  accordance  with  woman's  desire  to  play 
the  passive  and  never  the  active  part  in  the  sexual  act  and 
all  that  leads  to  it.*.\ 

It  is  the  universal  passivity  of  woman's  nature  which 
makes  her  accept  and  assume  man's  valuations  of  things, 
although  these  are  utterly  at  variance  with  her  nature. 
The  way  in  which  woman  can  be  impregnated  with  the 
masculine  point  of  view,  the  saturation  of  her  innermost 
thoughts  with  a  foreign  element,  her  false  recognition  of 
morahty,  which  cannot  be  called  hypocrisy  because  it  does 
not  conceal  anything  anti-moral,  her  assumption  and  prac- 
tise of  things  which  in  themselves  are  not  in  her  realm,  are 
all  very  well  if  the  woman  does  not  try  to  use  her  own 
judgment,  and  they  succeed  in  keeping  up  the  fiction  of 
her  superior  morality.  Complications  first  arise  when  these 
acquired  valuations  come  into  collision  with  the  only  inborn, 
genuine,  and  universally  feminine  valuation,  the  supreme 
value  she  sets  on  pairing. 

Woman's  acceptance  of  pairing  as  the  supreme  good  is 
quite  unconscious  on  her  part.     As  she  has  no  sense  of 

*  The  quiescent,  inactive,  large  egg-cells  are  sought  out  by  the 
mobile,  active,  and  slender  spermatozoa. 


264  SEX  AND  CHARACTER 

individuality  she  has  nothing  to  contrast  with  oairing  ;  and 
so,  unlike  man,  she  cannot  realise  its  significance,  or  even 
notice  the  presence  in  herself  of  this  instinct. 

No  woman  knows,  or  ever  has  known,  or  ever  will 
know,  what  she  does  when  she  enters  into  association  with 
man.  Femaleness  is  identical  with  pairing,  and  a  woman 
would  have  to  get  outside  herself  in  order  to  see  and  under- 
stand that  she  pairs.  Thus  it  is  that  the  deepest  desire  of 
woman,  all  that  she  means,  and  all  that  she  is,  remain 
unrecognised  by  her.  There  is  nothing,  then,  to  prevent 
the  male  negative  valuation  of  pairing  overshadowing  the 
female  positive  valuation  of  it  in  the  consciousness  of  the 
woman.  The  susceptibility  of  woman  is  so  great  that 
she  can  even  act  in  opposition  to  what  she  is,  to  the  one 
thing  on  which  she  really  sets  a  positive  value  ! 

But  the  imposture  which  she  enacts  when  she  allows 
herself  to  be  incorporated  with  man's  opinions  of  sexuality 
and  shamelessness,  even  of  the  miposture  itself,  and  when 
she  uses  the  masculine  standard  for  her  actions,  is  such  a 
colossal  fraud  that  she  is  never  conscious  of  it ;  she  has 
acquired  a  second  nature,  without  even  guessing  that  it  is 
not  her  real  one  ;  she  takes  herself  seriously,  believes  she  is 
something  and  that  she  believes  in  something  ;  she  is  con- 
vinced of  the  sincerity  and  originality  of  her  moralisings  and 
opinions;  the  lie  is  as  deeply  rooted  as  that;  it  is  organic.  I 
cannot  do  better  than  speak  of  the  ontological  untruthfulness 
of  woman. 

Wolfram  von  Eschenbach  says  of  his  hero  : 

"  .  .   .So  keusch  und  rein 
Ruht'  er  bei  seiner  Königin, 
Dass  kein  Genügen  fand'  darin 
So  manches  Weib  beim  lieben  Mann. 
Dass  doch  so  manche  in  Gedanken 
Zur  Üppigkeit  will  überschwanken, 
Die  sonst  sich  spröde  zeigen  kann  ! 
Vor  Fremden  züchtig  sie  erscheinen. 
Doch  ist  des  Herzens  tiefstes  Meinen 
Das  Widerspiel  vom  äussern  Schein." 

Wolfram  indicates  clearly  enough  what  is  at  the  bottom 


WOMAN  AND  HER  SIGNIFICANCE      265 

of  woman's  heart,  but  he  does  not  say  all  that  is  to  be  said. 
Women  deceive  themselves  as  well  as  others  on  this  point. 
One  cannot  artificially  suppress  and  supplant  one's  real 
nature,  the  physical  as  well  as  the  other  side,  without  some- 
thing happening.  The  hygienic  penalty  that  must  be  paid 
for  woman's  denial  of  her  real  nature  is  hysteria. 

Of  all  the  neurotic  and  psychic  phenomena,  those  of 
hysteria  are  the  most  fascinating  for  psychologists ;  they 
represent  a  far  more  difficult  and,  therefore,  a  more  interest- 
ing study  than  those  observed  in  melancholia  or  in  simple 
paranoia. 

The  majority  of  psychiatrists  have  a  distrust  of  psycho- 
logical analyses  which  it  is  not  easy  for  them  to  shake  off ; 
every  statement  of  pathological  alteration  of  tissues  or 
intoxication  by  certain  means  is  for  them  a  limine  credible  ; 
it  is  only  in  psychical  matters  that  they  refuse  to  recognise 
a  primary  cause.  But  since  no  reason  has  so  far  been 
given  why  psychical  phenomena  should  be  of  importance 
secondary  to  physical  phenomena,  it  is  quite  justifiable  to 
disregard  such  prejudices. 

It  is  quite  possible — there  is  nothing  to  prevent  it  being 
so — that  a  very  great  deal,  perhaps  everything,  may  depend 
on  the  proper  interpretation  of  the  "  psychical  mechanism  " 
of  hysteria.  That  this  is  so  is  proved  by  the  fact  that  the 
few  conclusions  of  any  value  with  reference  to  hysteria  so 
far  discovered  have  been  arrived  at  in  this  way  ;  the  inves- 
tigations carried  out  by  Pierre  Janet,  Oskar  Vogt,  and 
particularly  by  J.  Breuer  and  S.  Freud,  show  what  I  mean. 
All  good  work  on  hysteria  will  undoubtedly  follow  the  lines 
these  men  have  worked  on  ;  that  is  to  say,  by  investigation 
of  the  psychological  processes  which  led  up  to  the  disease. 

I  believe  myself  that  what  may  be  called  a  psycho- 
logical sexual  traumatism  is  at  the  root  of  hysteria.  The 
typical  picture  of  a  hysterical  case  is  not  very  different 
from  the  following  :  A  woman  has  always  accepted  the 
male  views  on  sexual  matters  ;  they  are  in  reality  totally 
foreign  to  her  nature,  and  sometime,  by  some  chance,  out  of 
the  conflict  between  what  her  nature  asserts  to  be  true  and 


266  SEX  AND  CHARACTER 

what  she  has  always  accepted  as  true  and  beUeved  to  be 
true,  there  comes  what  may  be  called  a  "  wounding  of  the 
mind."  It  is  thus  possible  for  the  person  affected  to  declare 
a  sexual  desire  to  be  an  "  extraneous  body  in  her  conscious- 
ness," a  sensation  which  she  thinks  she  detests,  but  which 
in  reality  has  its  origin  in  her  own  nature.  The  tremendous 
intensity  with  which  she  endeavours  to  suppress  the  desire 
(and  which  only  serves  to  increase  it)  so  that  she  may  the 
more  vehemently  and  indignantly  reject  the  thought — these 
are  the  alternations  which  are  seen  in  hysteria.  And  the 
chronic  untruthfulness  of  woman  becomes  acute  if  the 
woman  has  ever  allowed  herself  to  be  imbued  with  man's 
ethically  negative  valuation  of  sexuality.  It  is  well  known 
that  hysterical  women  manifest  the  strongest  suggestibility 
with  men.  Hysteria  is  the  organic  crisis  of  the  organic 
untruthfulness  of  woman. 

I  do  not  deny  that  there  are  hysterical  men,  but  these  are 
comparatively  few ;  and  since  man's  psychic  possibilities 
are  endless,  that  of  becoming  "female  "  is  amongst  them, 
and,  therefore,  he  can  be  hysterical.  There  are  undoubtedly 
many  untruthful  men,  but  in  them  the  crisis  takes  a  different 
form,  man's  untruthfulness  being  of  a  different  kind  and 
never  so  hopeless  in  character  as  woman's. 

This  examination  mto  the  organic  untruthfulness  of 
woman,  into  her  inability  to  be  honest  about  herself  which 
alone  makes  it  possible  for  her  to  think  that  she  thinks 
what  is  really  totally  opposed  to  her  nature,  appears  to  me 
to  offer  a  satisfactory  explanation  of  those  difficulties  which 
the  aetiology  of  hysteria  present. 

Hysteria  shows  that  untruthfulness,  however  far  it  may 
reach,  cannot  suppress  everything.  By  education  or  environ- 
ment woman  adopts  a  whole  system  of  ideas  and  valuations 
which  are  foreign  to  her,  or,  rather,  has  patiently  submitted 
to  have  them  impressed  on  her  ;  and  it  would  need  a 
tremendous  shock  to  get  rid  of  this  strongly-rooted  psychical 
complexity,  and  to  transplant  woman  to  that  condition  of 
intellectual  helplessness  which  is  so  characteristic  of 
hysteria. 


WOMAN  AND  HER  SIGNIFICANCE      267 

An  extraordinary  shock  suffices  to  destroy  the  artificial 
structure,  and  to  place  woman  in  the  arena  to  undertake  a 
fight  between  her  unconscious,  oppressed  nature,  and  her 
certainly  conscious  but  unnatural  mind.  The  see-sawing 
which  now  begins  between  the  two  explains  the  unusual 
psychic  discontinuity  during  the  hysterical  phase,  the  con- 
tinual changes  of  mood,  none  of  which  are  subject  to  the 
control  of  a  dominant,  central,  controlling  nucleus  of  indi- 
viduality. It  is  extraordinary  how  many  contradictions 
can  co-exist  in  the  hysterical.  Sometimes  they  are  highly 
intelligent  and  able  to  judge  correctly  and  keenly  oppose 
hypnotism  and  so  forth.  Then,  again,  they  are  excited  by 
most  trivial  causes,  and  are  most  subject  to  hypnotic  trances. 
Sometimes  they  are  abnormally  chaste,  at  other  times 
extremely  sensual. 

All  this  is  no  longer  difficult  to  explain.  The  absolute 
sincerity,  the  painful  love  of  truth,  the  avoidance  of  every- 
thing sexual,  the  careful  judgment,  and  the  strength  of 
will — all  these  form  part  of  that  spurious  personality  which 
woman  in  her  passivity  has  taken  upon  herself  to  exhibit 
to  herself  and  to  the  world  at  large.  Everything  that 
belongs  to  her  original  temperament  and  her  real  sense 
form  that  "  other  self,"  that  "  unconscious  mind  "  which  can 
delight  in  obscurities  and  which  is  so  open  to  suggestion. 

It  has  been  endeavoured  to  show  that  in  what  is  known 
as  the  "  duplex  "  and  "  multiplex  personality,"  the  "  double 
conscience,"  the  "  dual  ego,"  lies  one  of  the  strongest 
arguments  against  the  belief  in  the  soul.  As  a  matter 
of  fact,  these  phenomena  are  the  very  reasons  why  we 
ought  to  believe  in  a  soul.  The  "  dividing  up  of  the 
personality  "  is  only  possible  when  there  never  has  been 
a  personality,  as  with  woman.  All  the  celebrated  cases 
which  Janet  has  described  in  his  book,  "  L'Automatisme 
Psychologique,"  concern  women,  not  in  a  single  instance 
man.  It  is  only  woman  who,  minus  soul  or  an  intelligible 
ego,  has  not  the  power  to  become  conscious  of  what  is  in 
her  ;  who  cannot  throw  the  light  of  truth  on  her  inmost 
self ;  who  can  by  her  completely  passive  inundation  by  a 


268  SEX  AND  CHARACTER 

consciousness  belonging  to  another,  allow  what  is  in  her 
own  nature  to  be  suppressed  by  an  extraneous  element ; 
who  can  display  the  hysterical  phenomena  described  by 
Janet.  Hysteria  is  the  bankruptcy  of  this  superficial  sham 
self  which  has  been  put  on,  and  the  woman  becomes  for 
the  time  being  a  tabula  rasa,  whilst  the  working  in  her  of 
her  own  genuine  nature  appears  to  her  as  something  coming 
from  without.  This  apparent  "  secondary  personality,"  this 
"  foreign  body  in  the  consciousness,"  this  false  self,  is,  in 
reality,  the  true  female  nature,  sexuality  itself  appearing, 
and  a  proper  understanding  of  this  fact,  and  of  the  com- 
plications that  must  ensue  from  the  ebbings  and  fiowings  of 
the  false,  supposed  to  be  true,  and  the  true  supposed  to  be 
false,  lie  at  the  root  of  the  most  difficult  phenomena  of 
hysteria. 

Woman's  incapacity  for  truth — which  I  hold  to  be  con- 
sequent on  her  lack  of  free  will  with  regard  to  the  truth,  in 
accordance  with  Kant's  "  Indetermmism  " — conditions  her 
falsity.  Any  one  who  has  had  anything  to  do  with  women 
knows  how  often  they  give  offhand  quite  patently  untrue 
reasons  for  what  they  have  said  or  done,  under  the  momen- 
tary necessity  of  answering  a  question.  It  is,  however, 
hysterical  subjects  who  are  most  careful  to  avoid  unveracity 
(in  a  most  marked  and  premeditated  way  before  strangers)  ; 
but  however  paradoxical  it  may  sound  it  is  exactly  in  this 
that  their  untruthfulness  lies  !  They  do  not  know  that  this 
desire  for  truth  has  come  to  them  from  outside  and  is  no 
part  of  their  real  nature. 

They  have  slavishly  accepted  the  postulate  of  morality, 
and,  therefore,  wish  to  show  at  every  opportunity,  like  a  good 
servant,  how  faithfully  they  follow  instructions. 

It  is  always  suspicious  when  a  man  is  frequently  spoken 
of  as  exceptionally  trustworthy  :  he  must  have  gone  out  of 
his  way  to  let  people  know  it,  and  it  would  be  safe  to  wager 
that  in  reahty  he  is  a  rogue.  No  confidence  must  be  placed 
in  the  genuineness  of  hysterical  morality,  which  doctors  (no 
doubt  in  good  faith)  often  emphasise  by  remarks  as  to 
the  high  moral  position  of  their  patients. 


WOMAN  AND  HER  SIGNIFICANCE      269 

I  repeat :  hysterical  patients  do  not  consciously  simulate. 
It  can  only  be  made  clear  to  them  by  suggestion  that  they 
actually  have  been  simulating,  and  all  the  "  confessions"  of 
the  dissimulation  can  only  be  explained  in  the  same  way. 
Otherwise  they  believe  in  their  own  natural  honesty  and 
morality.  Neither  are  the  various  things  which  torture 
them  imaginary;  it  is  much  more  likely  that  in  the  fact 
that  they  feel  them,  and  that  the  symptoms  first  disappear 
with  what  Breuer  calls  "catharsis  "  (the  successive  bringing 
to  their  consciousness  of  the  true  causes  of  their  illness  by 
hypnotism),  lies  the  proof  of  their  organic  untruthfulness. 

The  self-accusations  which  hysterical  people  are  so  full 
of  are  nothing  but  unconscious  dissimulation.  The  sense 
of  guilt,  which  is  equally  poignant  in  great  and  most 
trifling  things,  cannot  be  genuine  ;  if  the  hysterical  self- 
torturers  possessed  a  standard  of  morality  for  themselves 
and  others  they  would  not  be  so  indiscriminate  in  their 
self-accusations,  and  not  cast  as  much  blame  on  themselves 
for  a  slight  error  as  for  real  wrong-doing. 

The  most  distingishing  character  of  the  unconscious  un- 
truthfulness of  their  self-reproaches  is  their  habit  of  telling 
others  how  wicked  they  are,  what  terrible  things  they  have 
done,  and  then  they  ask  if  they  (the  hysterical)  are  not  hope- 
lessly abandoned  sort  of  people.  No  one  who  really  feels 
remorse  could  talk  in  such  a  way.  The  fallacy  of  repre- 
senting the  hysterical  as  being  eminently  moral  is  one  which 
even  Breuer  and  Freud  have  shared.  The  h^^sterical  simply 
become  imbued  with  moral  ideas  which  are  foreign  to  them 
in  their  normal  state.  They  subordinate  themselves  to  this 
code,  they  cease  to  prove  things  for  themselves,  they  no 
longer  exercise  their  own  judgment. 

Probably  these  hysterical  subjects  approach  more  closely 
than  any  other  natures  to  the  moral  ideal  of  the  social  and 
utilitarian  ethics  which  regard  a  lie  as  moral  if  it  is  for  the 
good  of  society  or  of  the  race.  Hysterical  women  realise 
that  ideal  ontogenetically  inasmuch  as  their  standard  of 
morality  comes  from  without,  not  from  within,  and  prac- 
tically as  they  appear  to  act  most  readily  from  altruistic 


270  SEX  AND  CHARACTER 

motives.  For  them  duty  towards  others  is  not  merely 
a  special  application  of  duty  towards  oneself. 

The  untruthfulness  of  the  hysterical  is  proportional  to 
their  belief  in  their  own  accuracy.  From  their  complete 
inability  to  attain  personal  truth,  to  be  honest  about  them- 
selves— the  hysterical  never  think  for  themselves,  they  want 
other  people  to  think  about  them,  they  want  to  arouse  the 
interest  of  others — it  follows  that  the  hysterical  are  the 
best  mediums  for  hypnotic  purposes.  But  any  one  who 
allows  him  or  herself  to  be  hypnotised  is  doing  the  most 
immoral  thing  possible.  It  is  yielding  to  complete  slavery  ; 
it  is  a  renunciation  of  the  will  and  consciousness  ;  it  means 
allowing  another  person  to  do  what  he  likes  with  the  sub- 
ject. Hypnosis  shows  how  all  possibility  of  truth  depends 
upon  the  wish  to  be  truthful,  but  it  must  be  the  real  wish  of 
the  person  concerned  :  when  a  hypnotised  person  is  told  to 
do  something,  he  does  it  when  he  comes  out  of  the  trance, 
and  if  asked  his  reasons  will  give  a  plausible  motive  on  the 
spot,  not  only  before  others,  but  he  will  justify  his  action 
to  himself  by  quite  fanciful  reasons.  In  this  we  have,  so  to 
speak,  an  experimental  proof  of  Kant's  "  Ethical  Code." 

All  women  can  be  hypnotised  and  like  being  hypnotised, 
but  this  proclivity  is  exaggerated  in  hysterical  women. 
Even  the  memory  of  definite  events  in  their  life  can  be 
destroyed  by  the  mere  suggestion  of  the  hypnotiser. 
Breuer's  experiments  on  hypnotised  patients  show  clearly 
that  the  consciousness  of  guilt  in  them  is  not  deeply  seated, 
as  otherwise  it  could  not  be  got  rid  of  at  the  mere  sugges- 
tion of  the  hypnotiser.  But  the  sham  conviction  of 
responsibility,  so  readily  exhibited  by  women  of  hysterical 
constitution,  rapidly  disappears  at  the  moment  when  nature, 
the  sexual  impulse,  appears  to  drive  through  the  superficial 
restraints.  In  the  hysterical  paroxysm  what  happens  is  that 
the  woman,  while  no  longer  believing  it  altogether  herself, 
asseverates  more  and  more  loudly :  "I  do  not  want 
that  at  all,  some  one  not  really  me  is  forcing  it  on  me,  but 
I  do  not  want  it  at  all."  Every  stimulation  from  outside 
will  now  be  brought  into  relation  with  that  demand,  which. 


WOMAN  AND  HER  SIGNIFICANCE      271 

as  she  partly  believes,  is  being  forced  on  her,  but  which,  in 
reality,  corresponds  with  the  deepest  wish  of  her  nature. 
That  is  why  women  in  a  hysterical  attack  are  so  easily 
seduced.  The  "  attitudes  passionelles "  of  the  hysterical 
are  merely  passionate  repudiations  of  sexual  desire,  which  are 
loud  merely  because  they  are  not  real,  and  are  more  plaintive 
than  at  other  times  because  the  danger  is  greater.  It  is 
easy  to  understand  why  the  sexual  experiences  of  the  time 
preceding  puberty  play  so  large  a  part  in  acute  hysteria. 
The  influence  of  extraneous  moral  views  can  be  imposed 
comparatively  easily  on  the  child,  as  they  have  little  to 
overcome  in  the  almost  unawakened  state  of  the  sexual  incli- 
nations. But,  later  on,  the  suppressed,  although  not  wholly 
vanquished,  nature  lays  hold  of  these  old  experiences,  rein- 
terprets them  in  the  light  of  the  new  contents  of  conscious- 
ness, and  the  crisis  takes  place.  The  different  forms  that 
the  paroxysms  assume  and  their  shifting  nature  are  due  very 
largely  to  the  fact  that  the  subject  does  not  admit  the  true 
cause,  the  presence  of  a  sexual  desire,  any  consciousness  of 
it  being  attributed  by  her  to  some  extraneous  influence, 
some  self  that  is  not  her  "  real  self." 

Medical  observation  or  interpretation  of  hysteria  is  wrong ; 
it  allows  itself  to  be  deceived  by  the  patients,  who  in  turn 
deceive  themselves.  It  is  not  the  rejecting  ego  but  the 
rejected  which  is  the  true  and  original  nature  of  the  hysterical 
patients,  however  much  they  pretend  to  themselves  and 
others  that  it  is  foreign  to  them. 

If  the  rejecting  ego  were  really  their  natural  ego  they 
could  act  in  opposition  to  the  disturbing  element  which 
they  say  is  foreign  to  them,  and  be  fully  conscious  of  it,  and 
differentiate  and  recognise  it  in  their  memory.  But  the 
fraud  is  evident,  because  the  rejecting  ego  is  only  borrowed, 
and  they  lack  the  courage  to  look  their  own  desire  in  the 
face,  although  something  seems  to  say  that  it  is  the  real, 
inborn,  and  only  powerful  one  they  have.  Even  the  desire 
itself  has  no  real  identity,  for  it  is  not  seated  in  a  real  indi- 
vidual, and,  as  it  is  suppressed,  leaps,  so  to  speak,  from  one 
part  of  the  body  to  the  other.     It  may  be  that  my  attempt 


272  SEX  AND  CHARACTER 

at  an  explanation  will  be  thought  fanciful,  but  at  least  it 
appears  to  be  true  that  the  various  forms  of  hysteria  are 
one  and  the  same  thing.  This  one  thing  is  what  the 
hysterical  patient  will  not  admit  is  part  of  hei,  although  it 
is  what  is  pressing  on  her.  If  she  were  able  to  ascribe  it  to 
herself  and  criticise  it  in  the  way  in  which  she  admits  trivial 
matters  of  another  kind,  she  would  be  in  a  measure  outside 
and  above  her  own  experiences.  The  frantic  rage  of  hys- 
terical women  at  what  they  say  is  imposed  on  them  by  some 
strange  will,  whilst  it  in  reality  is  their  own  will,  shows  that 
theyare  just  as  much  under  the  domination  of  sexuality  as  are 
non-hysterical  women,  are  just  as  subject  to  their  destiny 
and  incapable  of  avertmg  it,  since  they,  too,  are  without 
any  intelligible,  free  ego. 

But  it  may  be  asked,  with  reason,  why  all  women  are  not 
hysterical,  since  all  women  are  liars  ?  This  brings  us  to  a 
necessary  inquiry  as  to  the  hysterical  constitution.  If  my 
theory  has  been  on  the  right  lines,  it  ought  to  be  able  to 
give  an  answer  in  accordance  with  facts.  According  to  it, 
the  hysterical  woman  is  one  who  has  passively  accepted  in 
entirety  the  masculine  and  conventional  valuations  instead 
of  allowing  her  own  mental  character  its  proper  play.  The 
woman  who  is  not  to  be  led  is  the  antithesis  of  the  hysterical 
woman.  I  must  not  delay  over  this  point ;  it  really  belongs 
to  special  female  characterology.  The  hysterical  woman  is 
hysterical  because  she  is  servile  ;  mentally  she  is  identical 
with  the  maid-servant.  Her  opposite  (who  does  not  really 
exist)  is  the  shrewish  dame.  So  that  women  may  be  sub- 
divided into  the  maid  who  serves,  and  the  woman  who 
commands.* 

The  servant  is  born  and  not  made,  and  there  are  many 
women  in  good  circumstances  who  are  *'  born  servants," 
although  they  never  need  to  put  their  rightful  position  to 

*  We  may  find  the  analogy  to  this  in  men  :  there  are  masculine 
"  servants "  who  are  so  by  nature,  and  there  is  the  masculine 
form  of  the  shrew — e.g.,  the  policeman.  It  is  a  noticeable 
fact  that  a  policeman  usually  finds  his  sexual  complement  in  the 
housemaid. 


WOMAN  AND  HER  SIGNIFICANCE      273 

the  test  !  The  servant  and  the  mistress  are  a  sort  of  "  com- 
plete woman  "  when  considered  as  a  "whole."* 

The  consequences  of  this  theory  are  fully  borne  out  by 
experience.  The  Xanthippe  is  the  woman  who  has  the 
least  resemblance  to  the  hysterical  type.  She  vents  her 
spleen  (which  is  really  the  outcome  of  unsatisfied  sexual 
desires)  on  others,  whereas  the  hysterical  woman  visits 
hers  on  herself.  The  "  shrew "  detests  other  women,  the 
"  servant  "  detests  herself.  The  drudge  weeps  out  her  woes 
alone,  without  really  feeling  lonely — loneliness  is  identical 
with  morality,  and  a  condition  which  implies  true  duality  or 
manifoldness  ;  the  shrew  hates  to  be  alone  because  she 
must  have  some  one  to  scold,  whilst  hysterical  women  vent 
their  passion  on  themselves.  The  shrew  lies  openly  and 
boldly  but  without  knowing  it,  because  it  is  her  nature  to 
think  herself  always  in  the  right,  and  she  insults  those  who 
contradict  her.  The  servant  submits  wonderingly  to  the 
demands  made  of  her  which  are  so  foreign  to  her  nature  : 
the  hypocrisy  of  this  pliant  acquiescence  is  apparent  in  her 
hysterical  attacks  when  the  conflict  with  her  own  sexual 
emotions  begins.  It  is  because  of  this  receptivity  and  sus- 
ceptibility that  hysteria  and  the  hysterical  type  of  woman 
are  so  leniently  dealt  with  :  it  is  this  type,  and  not  the 
shrewish  type,  that  will  be  cited  in  opposition  to  my  views.f 

Untruthfulness,  organic  untruthfulness,  characterises  both 
types,  and  accordingly  all  women.     It  is  quite  wrong  to  say 

*  A  real  dame  would  never  dream  of  asking  her  husband  what 
she  was  to  do,  what  she  is  to  give  him  for  dinner,  &c. ;  the  hysteri- 
cal woman,  on  the  contrary,  is  always  lacking  in  ideas,  and  wants 
suggestions  from  others.  This  is  a  rough  way  of  indicating  the 
two  types. 

f  It  is  the  "  yielding  type  "  and  not  the  virago  type  of  woman 
that  men  think  capable  of  love.  Such  a  woman's  love  is  only  the 
mental  sense  of  satisfaction  aroused  by  the  maleness  of  some  parti- 
cular man,  and,  therefore,  it  is  only  possible  with  the  hysterical  ;  it 
has  nothing  to  do  with  her  individual  power  of  loving,  and  can  have 
nothing  to  do  with  it.  The  bashfulness  of  woman  is  also  due  to 
her  "  obsession "  by  one  man ;  this  also  causes  her  neglect  of  all 
other  men. 


274  SEX  AND  CHARACTER 

that  women  lie.  That  would  imply  that  they  sometimes 
speak  the  truth.  Sincerity,  pro  foro  interno  et  externo,  is  the 
virtue  of  all  others  of  which  women  are  absolutely  incapable, 
which  is  impossible  for  them  ! 

The  point  I  am  urging  is  that  woman  is  never  genuine  at 
any  period  of  her  life,  not  even  when  she,  in  hysteria, 
slavishly  accepts  the  aspect  of  truth  laid  on  her  by  another, 
and  apparently  speaks  in  accordance  with  those  demands. 

A  woman  can  laugh,  cry,  blush,  or  even  look  wicked  at 
will  :  the  shrew,  when  she  has  some  object  in  view ;  the 
"  maid,"  when  she  has  to  make  a  decision  for  herself.  Men 
have  not  the  organic  and  physiological  qualifications  for 
such  dissimulation. 

If  we  are  able  to  show  that  the  supposed  love  of  truth 
in  these  types  of  woman  is  no  more  than  their  natural 
hypocrisy  in  a  mask,  it  is  only  to  be  expected  that  all  the 
other  qualities  for  which  woman  has  been  praised  will  suffer 
under  analysis.  Her  modesty,  her  self-respect,  and  her 
religious  fervour  are  loudly  acclaimed.  Womanly  modesty, 
none  the  less,  is  nothing  but  prudery,  i.e.,  an  extravagant 
denial  and  rejection  of  her  natural  immodesty.  Whenever 
a  woman  evinces  any  trace  of  what  could  really  be  called 
modesty,  hysteria  is  certainly  answerable  for  it.  The  woman 
who  is  absolutely  unhysterical  and  not  to  be  influenced, 
i.e.,  the  absolute  shrew,  will  not  be  ashamed  of  any  re- 
proaches her  husband  may  shower  on  her,  however  just ; 
incipient  hysteria  is  present  when  a  woman  blushes  under 
her  husband's  direct  censure ;  but  hysteria  in  its  most 
marked  form  is  present  when  a  woman  blushes  when  she 
is  quite  alone  :  it  is  only  then  that  she  may  be  said  to  be 
fully  impregnated  with  the  masculine  standard  of  values. 

The  women  who  most  nearly  approximate  to  what  has 
been  called  sexual  anaethesia  or  frigidity  are  always 
hysterical,  as  Paul  Solliers,  with  whom  I  entirely  agree, 
discovered.  Sexual  anaesthesia  is  merely  one  of  the 
many  hysterical,  that  is  to  say,  unreal,  simulated  forms  of 
anaesthesia.  Oskar  Vogt,  in  particular  (and  general  obser- 
vation has   confirmed  him),  proved  that  such   anaesthesia 


WOMAN  AND  HER  SIGNIFICANCE      275 

does  not  involve  a  real  lack  of  sensation,  but  is  simply  due 
to  an  inhibition  which  keeps  certain  sensations  in  check,  and 
excludes  them  from  the  consciousness. 

If  the  anaesthetised  arm  of  a  hypnotised  subject  is  pricked 
a  certain  number  of  times,  and  the  medium  is  told  to  say 
how  many  times  he  has  been  pricked,  he  is  able  to  do  so, 
although  otherwise  he  would  not  have  perceived  them.  So 
also  with  sexual  frigidity  ;  it  is  an  order  given  by  the  con- 
trolling force  of  the  super-imposed  asexual  ideas;  but  this, 
like  all  other  forms  of  anaesthesia,  can  be  counteracted  by  a 
sufficiently  strong  "  order." 

The  repulsion  to  sexuality  in  general  shown  by  the 
hysterical  woman  corresponds  in  its  nature  with  her 
insensibility  to  sexual  matters  in  her  own  case.  Such  a 
repulsion,  an  intense  disinclination  for  everything  sexual, 
is  really  present  in  many  women,  and  this  may  be  urged 
as  an  exception  to  my  generalisation  as  to  the  universality 
in  woman  of  the  match-making  tendency.  But  women 
who  are  made  ill  by  discovering  two  people  in  sexual  inter- 
course are  always  hysterical.  In  this  we  have  a  special 
justification  of  the  theory  which  holds  match-making  to  be 
the  true  nature  of  woman,  and  which  looks  upon  her  own 
sexuality  as  merely  a  special  case  of  it.  A  woman  may 
be  made  hysterical  not  only  by  a  sexual  suggestion  to  herself 
which  she  outwardly  resists  whilst  inwardly  assenting  to  it, 
but  may  be  just  as  much  so  by  the  sight  of  two  people  in 
sexual  intercourse,  for,  though  she  thinks  the  matter  has  no 
value  for  her,  her  inborn  assent  to  it  forces  itself  through 
all  outward  and  artificial  barriers,  and  overcomes  the  super- 
imposed and  incorporated  method  of  thought  in  which  she 
usually  lives.  That  is  to  say,  she  feels  herself  involved  in 
the  sexual  union  of  others. 

Something  similar  takes  place  in  the  hysterical  "  conscious- 
ness of  guilt,"  which  has  already  been  spoken  about.  The 
absolute  shrew  never  feels  herself  really  in  the  wrong ; 
the  woman  who  is  slightly  hysterical  only  feels  so  in  the 
presence  of  men  ;  the  woman  who  is  thoroughly  hysterical 
feels  it  in  the  presence  of  the  particular  man  who  dominates 


276  SEX  AND  CHARACTER 

her.  One  cannot  prove  the  existence  of  a  sense  of  guilt  in 
woman  by  the  mortifications  to  which  "  devotees "  and 
"  penitents"  subject  themselves.  It  is  these  extreme  cases 
of  self-discipline  which  make  one  suspicious.  Doing 
penance  proves,  in  most  cases,  that  the  doer  has  not  over- 
come his  fault,  that  the  sense  of  guilt  has  not  really  entered 
consciousness  ;  it  appears  really  to  be  much  rather  an 
attempt  to  force  repentance  from  the  outside,  to  make  up  for 
not  really  feeling  it. 

The  difference  between  the  conviction  of  guilt  in 
hysterical  women  and  in  men,  and  the  origin  of  the 
self-reproaches  of  the  former,  are  of  some  importance. 
When  the  hysterical  woman  realises  that  she  has  done  or 
thought  something  immoral,  she  tries  to  rectify  it  by 
some  code  which  she  seeks  to  obey  and  to  substitute  in 
her  mind  in  place  of  the  immoral  thought.  She  does  not 
really  get  rid  of  the  thought  which  is  too  deeply  rooted  in 
her  nature  ;  she  does  not  really  face  it,  try  to  understand 
it,  and  so  purge  herself  of  it.  She  simply,  from  point  to 
point,  case  by  case,  tries  to  adhere  to  the  moral  code  without 
ever  transforming  herself,  reforming  her  idea.  The  moral 
character  in  the  woman  is  elaborated  bit  by  bit ;  in  the  male 
right  conduct  comes  from  moral  character.  The  vow  re- 
models the  whole  man  ;  the  change  takes  place  in  the  only 
possible  way,  from  within  outwards,  and  leads  to  a  real 
morality  which  is  not  only  a  justification  by  works.  The 
morality  of  the  woman  is  merely  superficial  and  is  not  real 
morality. 

The  current  opinion  that  woman  is  religious  is  equally 
erroneous.  Female  mysticism,  when  it  is  anything  more 
than  mere  superstition,  is  either  thinly  veiled  sexuality  (the 
identification  of  the  Deity  and  the  lover  has  been  frequently 
discussed,  as,  for  instance,  in  Maupassant's  "  Bel-Ami,"  or  in 
Hauptmann's  "  Hannele's  Himmelfahrt")  as  in  numberless 
spiritualists  and  theosophists,  or  it  is  a  mere  passive  and 
unconscious  acceptance  of  man's  religious  views  which  are 
clung  to  the  more  firmly  because  of  woman's  natural 
disinclination  for  them.     The  lover  is  readily  transformed 


WOMAN  AND  HER  SIGNIFICANCE      277 

into  a  Saviour  ;  very  readily  (as  is  well  known  to  be  the 
case  with  many  nuns)  the  Saviour  becomes  the  lover.  All 
the  great  women  visionaries  known  to  history  were  hys- 
terical ;  the  most  famous,  Santa  Teresa,  was  not  misnamed 
"the  patron  saint  of  hysteria."  At  any  rate,  if  woman's 
religiousness  were  genuine,  and  if  it  proceeded  from  her 
own  nature,  she  would  have  done  something  great  in  the 
religious  world  ;  but  she  never  has  done  anything  of  any 
importance.  I  should  like  to  put  shortly  what  I  take  to 
be  the  difference  between  the  masculine  and  feminine 
creeds  ;  man's  religion  consists  in  a  supreme  belief  in  him- 
self, woman's  in  a  supreme  belief  in  other  people. 

There  is  left  to  consider  the  self-respect  which  is  often 
described  as  being  so  highly  developed  in  the  hysterical.  That 
it  is  only  man's  self-respect  which  has  been  so  thoroughly 
forced  into  woman,  is  clear  from  its  nature  and  the  way  it 
shows  itself,  as  Vogt,  who  extended  and  verified  experiments 
first  made  by  Freud,  discovered  from  self-respect  under 
hypnotism.  The  extraneous  masculine  will  creates  by  its 
influence  a  "self-respecting"  subject  in  the  hypnotised 
woman  by  inducing  a  limitation  of  the  field  of  the  un- 
hypnotised  state.  Apart  from  suggestion,  in  the  ordinary 
life  of  the  hysterical  it  is  only  the  man  with  whom  they 
are  "  impregnated "  who  is  respected  in  them.  Any 
knowledge  of  human  nature  which  women  have  comes 
from  their  absorption  of  the  right  sort  of  man.  In  the 
paroxysms  of  hysteria  this  artificial  self-respect  disappears 
with  the  revolt  of  oppressed  nature. 

This  is  quite  parallel  to  the  clairvoyance  of  hysterical 
mediums,  which  is  undoubted,  but  has  as  little  to  do  with 
"occult"  spiritism  as  the  ordinary  hypnotic  phenomena. 
Just  as  Vogt's  patients  made  strenuous  efforts  to  observe 
themselves  carefully  under  the  powerful  will  of  the 
suggestor,  the  clairvoyante,  under  the  influence  of  the 
dominating  voice  of  the  man  who  is  imposing  his  will  on 
her,  is  capable  of  telepathic  performances,  and  at  his 
command  can,  blindfolded,  read  communications  held 
by   people   unknown    to   her   at   a   great  distance   away ; 


278  SEX  AND  CHARACTER 

this  I  saw  happen  at  München  under  circumstances  which 
precluded  any  chance  of  fraud. 

In  woman  there  are  not  strong  passions  opposed  to  the 
desire  for  the  good  and  true  as  is  the  case  with  man.  The 
masculine  will  has  more  power  over  woman  than  over  the 
man  himself  ;  it  can  realise  something  in  women  which,  in 
his  own  case,  has  to  encounter  too  many  obstacles.  He 
himself  has  to  battle  with  an  anti-moral  and  anti-logical 
opposition  in  himself.  The  masculine  will  can  obtain  such 
power  over  woman's  mind  that  he  makes  her,  in  a  sense, 
clairvoyant,  and  breaks  down  her  limitations  of  mentality. 

Thus  it  comes  about  that  woman  is  more  telepathic  than 
man,  can  appear  more  innocent,  and  can  accomplish  more 
as  a  "  seer,"  and  it  is  only  when  she  becomes  a  medium,  i.e., 
the  object,  that  she  realises  in  herself  most  easily  and  surely 
the  masculine  will  for  the  good  and  true.  Wala  can  be 
made  to  understand,  but  not  until  Dotan  subdues  her.  She 
meets  him  half-way,  for  her  one  desire  is  to  be  conquered. 

The  subject  of  hysteria,  so  far  as  the  purposes  of  this 
book  are  concerned,  is  now  exhausted. 

The  women  who  are  uniformly  quoted  as  proofs  of 
female  morality  are  always  of  the  hysterical  type,  and  it  is 
the  very  observance  of  morality,  in  domg  things  according 
to  the  moral  law  as  if  this  moral  law  were  a  law  of  their 
personality  instead  of  being  only  an  acquired  habit,  that 
the  unreaUty,  the  immorality  of  this  morality  is  shown. 

The  hysterical  diathesis  is  an  absurd  imitation  of  the 
masculine  mind,  a  parody  of  free  will  which  woman  parades 
at  me  very  moment  when  she  is  most  under  a  masculine 
influence. 

Woman  is  not  a  free  agent ;  she  is  altogether  subject  to 
her  desire  to  be  under  man's  influence,  herself  and  all 
others  :  she  is  under  the  sway  of  the  phallus,  and  irre- 
trievably succumbs  to  her  destiny,  even  if  it  leads  to 
actively  developed  sexuality.  At  the  most  a  woman  can 
reach  an  indistinct  feeling  of  her  un-freedom,  a  cloudy 
idea  of  the  possibility  of  controlling  her  destiny — mani- 
festly only  a  flickering  spark  of  the  free,  intelligible  subject, 


WOMAN  AND  HER  SIGNIFICANCE       279 

the  scanty  remains  of  inherited  maleness  in  her,  which,  by 
contrast,  gives  her  even  this  shght  comprehension.  It  is 
also  impossible  for  a  woman  to  have  a  clear  idea  of  her 
destiny,  or  of  the  forces  within  her  :  it  is  only  he  who  is  free 
who  can  discern  fate,  because  he  is  not  chained  by 
necessity  ;  part  of  his  personality,  at  least,  places  him  in 
the  position  of  spectator  and  a  combatant  outside  his  own 
fate  and  makes  him  so  far  superior  to  it.  One  of  the  most 
conclusive  proofs  of  human  freedom  is  contained  in  the 
fact  that  man  has  been  able  to  create  the  idea  of  causality. 
Women  consider  themselves  most  free  when  they  are  most 
bound ;  and  they  are  not  troubled  by  the  passions,  because 
tliey  are  simply  the  embodiment  of  them.  It  is  only  a  man 
who  can  talk  of  the  "  dira  necessitas  "  within  him ;  it  is  only 
he  could  have  created  the  idea  of  destiny,  because  it  is  only 
he  who,  in  addition  to  the  empirical,  conditioned  existence, 
possesses  a  free,  intelligible  ego. 

As  1  have  shown,  woman  can  reach  no  more  than  a 
vague  half-consciousness  of  the  fact  that  she  is  a  conditioned 
being,  and  so  she  is  unable  to  overcome  the  sexuality  that 
binds  her.  Hysteria  is  the  only  attempt  on  her  part  to 
overcome  it,  and,  as  I  have  shown,  it  is  not  a  genuine 
attempt.  The  hysteria  itself  is  what  the  hysterical  woman 
tries  to  resist,  and  the  falsity  of  this  effort  against  slavery  is 
the  measure  of  its  hopelessness.  The  most  notable  examples 
of  the  sex  (I  have  in  mind  Hebbel's  Judith  and  Wagner's 
Kundryj  may  feel  that  is  because  they  wish  it  that  servitude 
is  a  necessity  for  them,  but  this  realisation  does  not  give 
them  power  to  resist  it  ;  at  the  last  moment  they  will  kiss 
the  man  who  ravishes  them,  and  succumb  with  pleasure  to 
those  whom  they  have  been  resisting  violently.  It  is  as  if 
woman  were  under  a  curse.  At  times  she  feels  the  weight 
of  it,  but  she  never  flees  from  it.  Her  shrieks  and  ravings 
are  not  really  genuine,  and  she  succumbs  to  her  fate  at  the 
moment  when  it  has  seemed  most  repulsive  to  her. 

After  a  long  analysis,  then,  it  has  been  found  that  there 
is  no  exception  to  the  complete  absence  in  women  of  any 
true,  inalienable  relation  to  worth.     Even  what  is  covered 


2  8o  SEX  AND  CHARACTER 

by  such  current  terms  as  "  womanly  love,"  "  womanly 
virtue,"  "  womanly  devoutness,"  "  womanly  modesty,"  has 
failed  to  invalidate  my  conclusions.  I  have  maintained  my 
ground  in  face  of  the  strongest  opposition,  even  including 
that  which  comes  from  woman's  hysterical  imitations  of  the 
male  morality. 

Woman,  the  normal  receptive  woman  of  whom  I  am 
speaking,  is  impregnated  by  the  man  not  only  physically 
(and  I  set  down  the  astonishing  mental  alteration  in 
women  after  marriage  to  a  physical  phenomenon  akin  to 
telegony),  but  at  every  age  of  her  life,  by  man's  conscious- 
ness and  by  man's  social  arrangements.  Thus  it  comes 
about  that  although  woman  lacks  all  the  characters  of  the 
male  sex,  she  can  assume  them  so  cleverly  and  so  slavishly 
that  it  is  possible  to  make  mistakes  such  as  the  idea  of  the 
higher  morality  of  women. 

But  this  astounding  receptivity  of  woman  is  not  isolated, 
and  must  be  brought  into  practical  and  theoretical  con- 
nection with  the  other  positive  and  negative  characteristics 
of  woman. 

What  has  the  match-making  instinct  m  woman  to  do  with 
her  plasticity  ?  What  connection  is  there  between  her 
untruthfulness  and  her  sexuality  ?  How  does  it  come 
about  that  there  is  such  a  strange  mixture  of  all  these 
things  in  woman  ? 

This  brings  us  to  ask  the  reason  why  women  can 
assimilate  everything.  Whence  does  she  derive  the 
falsity  which  makes  it  possible  for  her  to  prefer-^  to 
believe  only  what  others  have  told  her,  to  have  only 
what  they  (choose  to)  give  her,  to  be  merely  what  they 
make  her  ? 

In  order  to  give  the  right  answer  to  these  questions  we 
must  turn  once  more,  for  the  last  time,  from  the  actual  point. 
It  was  found  that  the  power  of  recognition  which  animals 
possess,  and  which  is  the  psychical  equivalent  of  universal 
organic  response  to  repeated  ^tumili,  was  curiously  like  and 
unlike  humany  memory  ;  both  signify  an  equally  lasting 
influence    of    an    impression    which    was    limited    to    a 


WOMAN  AND  HER  SIGNIFICANCE      281 

definite  period;  bui  memory  is  differentiated  from  mere 
passive  recognition  by  its  power  of  actively  reproducing 
the  past. 

Later  on,  it  was  seen  that  mere  individuation,  the  charac- 
terestic  of  all  organic  differentation,  and  individuality,  man's 
possession,  are  different.  And  finally  it  was  found  that  it 
was  necessary  to  distinguish  carefully  between  love,  peculiar 
to  man,  and  the  sexual  instinct,  shared  by  the  animals. 
The  two  are  allied  inasmuch  as  they  are  both  efforts  at 
immortality. 

The  desire  for  worth  was  referred  to  as  a  human  char- 
acter, absent  in  the  animals  where  there  is  only  a  desire 
for  satisfaction.  The  two  are  analagous,  and  yet  funda- 
mentally different.  Pleasure  is  craved  ;  worth  is  what 
we  feel  we  ought  to  crave.  The  two  have  been  con- 
fused, with  the  worst  results  for  psychology  and  ethics. 
There  has  been  a  similar  confusion  between  personality 
and  persons,  between  recognition  and  memory,  sexuality 
and  love. 

All  these  antitheses  have  bee^  continually  confused,  and, 
what  is  even  more  striking,  almost  always  by  men  with  the 
same  views  and  theories,  and  with  the  same  object — that  of 
trying  to  obliterate  the  difference  between  man  and  the 
lower  animals. 

There  are  other  less  known  distinctions  which  have  been 
equally  neglected.  Limited  consciousness  is  an  animal  trait ; 
the  active  power  of  noticing  is  a  purely  human  one.  It  is 
evident  that  there  is  something  in  common  in  the  two  facts, 
but  still  they  are  very  different.  Desire,  or  impulse,  and  will 
are  nearly  always  spoken  of  as  if  they  were  identical.  The 
former  is  common  to  all  living  creatures,  but  man  has,  in 
addition,  a  will,  which  is  free,  and  no  factor  of  psychology^ 
because  it  is  the  foundation  of  all  psychological  experiences. 
The  identification  of  impulse  and  will  is  not  solely  due  to 
Darwin  ;  it  occurred  also  in  Schopenhauer's  conception  of 
the  will,  which  was  sometimes  biological,  sometimes  purely 
philosophical. 

I  may  group  the  two  sets  of  factors  as  follows ' 


282  SEX  AND  CHARACrrER 

^               .                 J      •      1  Limited  to  mankind,  and  in 

Common  to  men  and  animals,  ,             ,           ,         « 

r     J          .11              •  particular  to  the  males  of 

fundamentally  organic.  ^      ,  .    , 

^      °  mankind. 

Individuation.  Individuality. 

Recognition.  Memory. 

Pleasure.  Sense  of  vi^orth  or  value. 

Sexual  desire.  Love. 

Limitation  of  the  field  of  Faculty    of     "  taking 

consciousness.  notice." 

Impulse.  Will. 

The  series  shows  that  man  possesses  not  only  each 
character  which  is  found  in  all  living  things,  but  also  an 
analagous  and  higher  character  peculiar  to  himself.  The 
old  tendency  at  once  to  identify  the  two  series  and  to  con- 
trast them  seems  to  show  the  existence  of  something  binding 
together  the  two  series,  and  at  the  same  time  separating 
them.  One  may  recall  in  this  connection  the  Buddhistic 
conception  of  there  being  in  man  a  superstructure  added  to 
the  characters  of  lower  existences.  It  is  as  if  man  possessed 
all  the  properties  of  the  beasts,  with,  in  each  case,  some 
special  quality  added.  What  is  this  that  has  been  added  ? 
How  far  does  it  resemble,  and  in  what  respects  does  it  differ, 
from  the  more  primitive  set  ? 

The  terms  in  the  left-hand  row  are  fundamental  charac- 
teristics of  all  animal  and  vegetable  life.  All  such  life  is 
individual  life,  not  the  life  of  undivided  masses  ;  it  manifests 
itself  as  the  impulse  to  satisfy  needs,  as  sexual  impulse  for 
the  purpose  of  reproduction.  Individuality,  memory,  will, 
love,  are  those  qualities  of  a  second  life,  which,  although 
related  to  organic  life  to  a  certain  extent,  are  toto  ccelo 
different  from  it. 

This  brings  us  face  to  face  with  the  religious  idea  of  the 
eternal,  higher,  new  life,  and  especially  with  the  Christian 
form  of  it. 

As  well  as  a  share  in  organic  life,  man  shares  another 
life,  the  ^wi?  alwWc  of  the  New  Dispensation.  Just  as  all 
earthly  life  is  sustained   by   earthly  food,  this  other  life 


WOMAN  AND  HER  SIGNIFICANCE      283 

requires  spiritual  sustenance  (symbolised  in  the  communion 
service).  The  birth  and  death  of  the  former  have  their 
counterparts  in  the  latter — the  moral  re-birth  of  man,  the  "  re- 
generation " — and  the  end  :  the  final  loss  of  the  soul  through 
error  or  crime.  The  one  is  determined  from  without  by 
the  bonds  of  natural  causation  ;  the  other  is  ruled  by  the 
moral  imperative  from  within.  The  one  is  limited  and 
confined  to  a  definite  purpose ;  the  other  is  unlimited, 
eternal  and  moral.  The  characters  which  are  in  the  left 
row  are  common  to  all  forms  of  lower  life  ;  those  in  the 
right-hand  column  are  the  corresponding  presages  of  eternal 
life,  manifestations  of  a  higher  existence  in  which  man,  and 
only  man,  has  a  share.  The  perpetual  intermingling  and 
the  fresh  complications  which  arise  between  the  higher 
and  lower  natures  are  the  making  of  all  history  of  the  human 
mind ;  this  is  the  plot  of  the  history  of  the  universe. 

It  is  possible  that  some  may  perceive  in  this  second  life 
something  which  in  man  might  have  been  derived  from  the 
other  lower  characters  ;  such  a  possibility  dismiss  at  once. 

A  clearer  grasp  of  this  sensuous,  impressionable  lower 
life  will  make  it  clear  that,  as  I  have  explained  in  earlief 
chapters,  the  case  is  reversed ;  the  lower  life  is  merely  a 
projection  of  the  higher  on  the  world  of  the  senses,  a 
reflection  of  it  in  the  sphere  of  necessity,  as  a  degradation 
of  it,  or  its  Fall.  And  the  great  problem  is  how  the  eternal, 
lofty  idea  came  to  be  bound  with  earth.  This  problem  is 
the  guilt  of  the  world.  My  investigation  is  now  on  the 
threshold  of  what  cannot  be  investigated  ;  of  a  problem 
that  so  far  no  one  has  dared  to  answer,  and  that  never  will 
be  answered  by  any  human  being.  It  is  the  riddle  of  the 
universe  and  of  life  ;  the  binding  of  the  unlimited  in  the 
bonds  of  space,  of  the  eternal  in  time,  of  the  spirit  in 
matter.  It  is  the  relation  of  freedom  to  necessity,  of  some- 
thing to  nothing,  of  God  to  the  devil.  The  dualism  of  the 
world  is  beyond  comprehension  ;  it  is  the  plot  of  the  story 
of  man's  Fall,  the  primitive  riddle.  It  is  the  binding  of 
eternal  life  in  a  perishable  being,  of  the  innocent  in  the 
guilty. 


284  SEX  AND  CHARACTER 

But  it  is  evident  that  neither  I  nor  any  other  man  can 
understand  this.  I  can  understand  sin  only  when  I  cease 
to  commit  it,  and  the  moment  I  understand  it  I  cease  to 
commit  it.  So  also  I  can  never  comprehend  life  while  I  am 
still  alive.  There  is  no  moment  of  my  life  when  I  am  not 
bound  down  by  this  sham  existence,  and  it  must  be  impos- 
sible for  me  to  understand  the  bond  until  I  am  free  from  it. 
When  I  understand  a  thing  I  am  already  outside  it  ;  I 
cannot  comprehend  my  sinfulness  while  I  am  still  sinful. 

As  the  absolute  female  has  no  trace  of  individuality  and 
will,  no  sense  of  worth  or  of  love,  she  can  have  no  part 
in  the  higher,  transcendental  life.  The  intelligible,  hyper- 
empirical  existence  of  the  male  transcends  matter,  space, 
and  time.  He  is  certainly  mortal,  but  he  is  immortal  as 
well.  And  so  he  has  the  power  to  choose  between  the  two, 
between  the  life  which  is  lost  with  death  and  the  life  to 
which  death  is  only  a  stepping-stone.  The  deepest  will  of 
man  is  towards  this  perfect,  timeless  existence  ;  he  is  com- 
pact of  the  desire  for  immortality.  That  the  woman  has  no 
craving  for  perpetual  life  is  too  apparent ;  there  is  nothing 
in  her  of  that  eternal  which  man  tries  to  interpose  and 
must  interpose  between  his  real  self  and  his  projected, 
empirical  self.  Some  sort  of  relation  to  the  idea  of  supreme 
value,  to  the  idea  of  the  absolute,  that  perfect  freedom  which 
he  has  not  yet  attained,  because  he  is  bound  by  necessity, 
but  which  he  can  attain  because  mind  is  superior  to  matter ; 
such  a  relation  to  the  purpose  of  things  generally,  or  to  the 
divine,  every  man  has.  And  although  his  life  on  earth  is 
accompanied  by  separation  and  detachment  from  the  abso- 
lute, his  mind  is  always  longing  to  be  free  from  the  taint  of 
original  sin. 

Just- as  the  love  of  his  parents  was  not  pure  in  purpose, 
but  sought  more  or  less  a  physical  embodiment,  the  son, 
who  is  the  outcome  of  that  love,  will  possess  his  share  of 
mortal  life  as  well  as  of  eternal :  we  are  horrified  at  the  thought 
of  death,  we  fight  against  it,  cling  to  this  mortal  life,  and 
prove  from  that  that  we  were  anxious  to  be  born  as  we 
were  born,  and  that  we  still  desire  to  be  born  of  this  world. 


WOMAN  AND  HER  SIGNIFICANCE      285 

But  since  every  male  has  a  relation  to  the  idea  of  the 
highest  value,  and  would  be  incomplete  without  it,  no  male 
is  really  ever  happy.  It  is  only  women  who  are  happy. 
No  man  is  happy,  because  he  has  a  relation  to  freedom,  and 
yet  during  his  earthly  life  he  is  always  bound  in  some  way. 
None  but  a  perfectly  passive  being,  such  as  the  absolute 
female,  or  a  universally  active  being,  like  the  divine,  can  be 
happy.  Happiness  is  the  sense  of  perfect  consummation, 
and  this  feeling  a  man  can  never  have  ;  but  there  are  women 
who  fancy  themselves  perfect.  The  male  always  has  pro- 
blems behind  him  and  efforts  before  him  :  all  problems 
originate  in  the  past ;  the  future  is  the  sphere  for  efforts. 
Time  has  no  objective,  no  meaning,  for  woman  ;  no  woman 
questions  herself  as  to  the  reason  of  her  existence  ;  and  yet 
the  sole  purpose  of  time  is  to  give  expression  to  the  fact 
that  this  life  can  and  must  mean  something. 

Happiness  for  the  male  !  That  would  imply  wholly  inde- 
pendent activity,  complete  freedom ;  he  is  always  bound, 
although  not  with  the  heaviest  bonds,  and  his  sense  of  guilt 
increases  the  further  he  is  removed  from  the  idea  of  freedom, 

Mortal  life  is  a  calamity,  and  must  remain  so  whilst 
mankind  is  a  passive  victim  of  sensation  ;  so  long  as  he 
remains  not  form,  but  merely  the  matter  on  which  form  is 
impressed.  Every  man,  however,  has  some  glimmer  of 
higher  things  ;  the  genius  most  certainly  and  most  directly. 
This  trace  of  light,  however,  does  not  come  from  his  per- 
ceptions ;  so  far  as  he  is  ruled  by  these,  man  is  merely  a 
passive  victim  of  surrounding  things.  His  spontaneity,  his 
freedom,  come  from  his  power  of  judging  as  to  values, 
and  his  highest  approach  to  absolute  spontaneity  and  free- 
dom comes  from  love  and  from  artistic  or  philosophical 
creation.  Through  these  he  obtains  some  faint  sense  of 
what  happiness  might  be. 

Woman  can  really  never  be  quite  unhappy,  for  happiness 
•s  an  empty  word  for  her,  a  word  created  by  unhappy  men. 
Women  never  mind  letting  others  see  their  unhappiness,  as 
it  is  not  real ;  behind  it  there  lies  no  consciousness  of  guilt, 
no  sense  of  the  sin  of  the  world. 


286  SEX  AND  CHARACTER 

The  last  and  absolute  proof  of  the  thoroughly  negative 
character  of  woman's  life,  of  her  complete  want  of  a  higher 
existence,  is  derived  from  the  way  in  which  women  commit 
suicide. 

Such  suicides  are  accompanied  practically  always  by 
thoughts  of  other  people,  what  they  will  think,  how  they 
will  mourn  over  them,  how  grieved — or  angry — they  will 
be.  Every  woman  is  convinced  that  her  unhappiness  is 
undeserved  at  the  time  she  kills  herself ;  she  pities  herself 
exceedingly  with  the  sort  of  self-compassion  which  is  only 
a  "weeping  with  others  when  they  weep." 

How  is  it  possible  for  a  woman  to  look  upon  her  un- 
happiness as  personal  when  she  possesses  no  idea  of  a 
destiny?  The  most  appallingly  decisive  proof  of  the  empti- 
ness and  nullity  of  women  is  that  they  never  once  succeed 
in  knowing  the  problem  of  their  own  lives,  and  death  leaves 
them  ignorant  of  it,  because  they  are  unable  to  realise  the 
higher  life  of  personality. 

I  am  now  ready  to  answer  the  question  which  I  put 
forward  as  the  chief  object  of  this  portion  of  my  book,  the 
question  as  to  the  significance  of  the  male  and  female  in  the 
universe.  Women  have  no  existence  and  no  essence  ;  they 
are  not,  they  are  nothing.  Mankind  occurs  as  male  or 
female,  as  something  or  nothing.  Woman  has  no  share  in 
ontological  reality,  no  relation  to  the  thing-in-itself,  which, 
in  the  deepest  interpretation,  is  the  absolute,  is  God.  Man 
in  his  highest  form,  the  genius,  has  such  a  relation,  and  for 
him  the  absolute  is  either  the  conception  of  the  highest 
worth  of  existence,  in  which  case  he  is  a  philosopher  ;  or  it 
is  the  wonderful  fairyland  of  dreams,  the  kingdom  of  abso- 
lute beauty,  and  then  he  is  an  artist.  But  both  views  mean 
the  same.  Woman  has  no  relation  to  the  idea,  she  neither 
affirms  nor  denies  it ;  she  is  neither  moral  nor  anti-moral ; 
mathematically  speaking,  she  has  no  sign  ;  she  is  purposeless, 
neither  good  nor  bad,  neither  angel  nor  devil,  never  egoisti- 
cal {and  therefore  has  often  been  said  to  be  altruistic) ;  she 
is  as  non-moral  as  she  is  non-logical.  But  all  existence  is 
moral  and  logical  existence.     So  woman  has  no  existence. 


WOMAN  AND  HER  SIGNIFICANCE       287 

Woman  is  untruthful.  An  animal  has  just  as  little  meta- 
physical reality  as  the  actual  woman,  but  it  cannot  speak, 
and  consequently  it  does  not  lie.  In  order  to  speak  the 
truth  one  must  be  something ;  truth  is  dependent  on  an 
existence,  and  only  that  can  have  a  relation  to  an  existence 
which  is  in  itself  something.  Man  desires  truth  all  the 
time  ;  that  is  to  say,  he  all  along  desires  only  to  be  some- 
thing. The  cognition-impulse  is  in  the  end  identical  with 
the  desire  for  immortality.  Any  one  who  objects  to  a  state- 
ment without  ever  having  realised  it ;  any  one  who  gives 
outward  acquiescence  without  the  inner  affirmation,  such 
persons,  like  woman,  have  no  real  existence  and  must  of 
necessity  lie.  So  that  woman  always  lies,  even  if,  objec- 
tively, she  speaks  the  truth. 

Woman  is  the  great  emissary  of  pairing.  The  living  units 
of  the  lower  forms  of  life  are  individuals,  organisms  ;  the 
living  units  of  the  higher  forms  of  life  are  individualities, 
souls,  monads,  "  meta-organisms,"  a  term  which  Hellenbach 
uses  and  which  is  not  without  point. 

Each  monad,  however,  is  differentiated  from  every  other 
monad,  and  is  as  distinct  from  it  as  only  two  things  can  be. 
Monads  have  no  windows,  but,  instead,  have  the  universe 
in  themselves.  Man  as  monad,  as  a  potential  or  actual 
individuahty,  that  is,  as  having  genius,  has«  in  addition 
differentiation  and  distinction,  individuation  and  discrimina- 
tion ;  the  simple  undifferentiated  unit  is  exclusively  female. 
Each  monad  creates  for  itself  a  detached  entity,  a  whole  ; 
but  it  looks  upon  every  other  ego  as  a  perfect  totality  also, 
and  never  intrudes  upon  it.  Man  has  limits,  and  accepts 
them  and  desires  them  ;  woman,  who  does  not  recognise 
her  own  entity,  is  not  in  a  position  to  regard  or  perceive 
the  privacy  of  those  around  her,  and  neither  respects,  nor 
honours,  nor  leaves  it  alone  :  as  there  is  no  such  thing  as 
one-ness  for  her  there  can  be  no  plurality,  only  an 
indistinct  state  of  fusion  with  others.  Because  there  is  no 
"  I "  in  woman  she  cannot  grasp  the  "thou  "  ;  according  to 
her  perception  the  I  and  thou  are  just  a  pair,  an  undiffer- 
entiated one  ;  this  makes  it  possible  for  woman  to  bring 


288  SEX  AND  CHARACTER 

people  together,  to  match-make.  The  object  of  her  love  is 
that  of  her  sympathy — the  community,  the  blending  of 
everything.* 

Woman  has  no  limits  to  her  ego  which  could  be  broken 
through,  and  which  she  would  have  to  guard. 

The  chief  difference  between  man's  and  woman's  friend- 
ship is  referable  to  this  fact.  Man's  friendship  is  an  attempt 
to  see  eye  to  eye  with  those  who  individually  and  collec- 
tively are  striving  after  the  same  idea  ;  woman's  friendship 
is  a  combination  for  the  purpose  of  match-making.  It  is 
the  only  kind  of  intimate  and  unreserved  intercourse 
possible  between  women,  when  they  are  not  merely 
anxious  to  meet  each  other  for  the  purpose  of  gossiping  or 
discussing  every  day  affairs.f 

If,  for  instance,  one  of  two  girls  or  women  is  much 
prettier  than  the  other,  the  plainer  of  the  two  experiences  a 
certain  sexual  satisfaction  at  the  admiration  which  the 
other  receives.  The  principal  condition  of  all  friendship 
between  women  is  the  exclusion  of  rivalry  ;  every  woman 
compares  herself  physically  with  every  woman  she  gets  to 
know.  In  cases  where  one  is  more  beautiful  than  the  other, 
the  plainer  of  the  two  will  idolise  the  other,  because,  though 
neither  of  them  is  in  the  least  conscious  of  it,  the  next  best 
thing  to  her  own  sexual  satisfaction  for  the  one  is  the 
success  of  the  other ;  it  is  always  the  same  ;  woman  partici- 
pates in  every  sexual  union.  The  completely  impersonal 
existence  of  women,  as  well  as  the  super-individual  nature 
of  their  sexuality,  clearly  shows  match-making  to  be  the 
fundamental  trait  of  their  beings. 

The  least  that  even  the  ugliest  woman  demands,  and 
from  which  she  derives  a  certain  amount  of  pleasure,  is 
that  any  one  of  her  sex  should  be  admired  and  desired. 

It  follows  from  the   absorbing  and  absorbable  nature  of 

*  All  individuality  is  an  enemy  of  the  community.  This  is  seen 
most  markedly  in  men  of  genius,  but  it  is  just  the  same  with  regard 
to  the  sexes. 

•f  Men's  friendships  avoid  breaking  down  their  friends'  personal 
reserve.     Women  expect  intimacy  from  their  friends. 


WOMAN  AND  HER  SIGNIFICANCE      289 

woman's  life  that  women  can  never  feel  really  jealous. 
However  ignoble  jealousy  and  the  spirit  of  revenge  may  be, 
they  both  contain  an  element  of  greatness,  of  which 
women,  whether  for  good  or  evil,  are  incapable.  In 
jealousy  there  lies  a  despairing  claim  to  an  assumed  right, 
and  the  idea  of  justice  is  out  of  woman's  reach.  But  that 
is  not  the  chief  reason  why  a  woman  can  never  be  really 
jealous  of  any  man.  If  a  man,  even  if  he  were  the  man  she 
was  madly  in  love  with,  were  sitting  in  the  next  room 
making  love  to  another  woman,  the  thoughts  that  would  be 
aroused  in  her  breast  would  be  so  sexually  exciting  that 
they  would  leave  no  room  for  jealousy.  To  a  man,  such  a 
scene,  if  he  knew  of  it,  would  be  absolutely  repulsive,  and 
it  would  be  nauseous  to  him  to  be  near  it ;  woman  would 
feverishly  follow  each  detail,  or  she  would  become  hysteri- 
cal if  it  dawned  on  her  what  she  was  doing. 

A  man  is  never  really  affected  by  the  idea  of  the  pairing 
of  others  :  he  is  outside  and  above  any  such  circumstance 
which  has  no  meaning  for  him  ;  a  woman,  however,  would 
be  scarcely  responsible  for  her  interest  in  the  process,  she 
would  be  in  a  state  of  feverish  excitement  and  as  if  spell- 
bound by  the  thought  of  her  proximity  to  it. 

A  man's  interest  in  his  fellow  men,  who  are  problems  for 
him,  may  extend  to  their  sexual  affairs  ;  but  the  curiosity 
which  is  specially  for  these  things  is  peculiar  to  woman, 
whether  with  regard  to  men  or  women.  It  is  the  love 
affairs  of  a  man  which,  from  first  to  last,  interest  women  ; 
and  a  man  is  only  intellectually  mysterious  and  charming 
to  a  woman  so  long  as  she  is  not  clear  as  to  these. 

From  all  this  it  is  again  manifest  that  femaleness  and 
match-making  are  identical  ;  even  a  superficial  study  of  the 
case  would  have  resulted  in  the  same  conclusions.  But  I 
had  a  much  wider  purpose,  and  I  hope  I  have  clearly 
shown  the  connection  between  woman  positive  as  match- 
maker, and  woman  negative  as  utterly  lacking  in  the  higher 
life.  Woman  has  but  one  idea,  an  idea  she  cannot  be 
conscious  of,  as  it  is  her  sole  idea,  and  that  is  absolutely 
opposed  to  the  spiritual  idea.    Whether  as  a  mother  seeking 


290  SEX  AND  CHARACTER 

reputable  matrimony,  or  the  Bacchante  of  the  Venusberg, 
whether  she  wishes  to  be  the  foundress  of  a  family,  or  is 
content  to  be  lost  in  the  maze  of  pleasure-seekers,  she 
always  is  in  relation  to  the  general  idea  of  the  race  as  a 
whole  of  which  she  is  an  inseparable  part,  and  she  follows 
the  instinct  which  most  of  all  makes  for  community. 

She,  as  the  missionary  of  union,  must  be  a  creature 
without  limits  or  individuality.  I  have  prolonged  this  side 
of  my  investigation  because  its  important  result  has  been 
omitted  from  all  earlier  characterology. 

At  this  stage  it  well  may  be  asked  if  women  are  really  to 
be  considered  human  beings  at  all,  or  if  my  theory  does  not 
unite  them  with  plants  and  animals  ?  For,  according  to 
the  theory,  women,  just  as  little  as  plants  and  animals, 
have  any  real  existence,  any  relation  to  the  intelligible 
whole.'  Man  alone  is  a  microcosm,  a  mirror  of  the 
universe 

In  Ibsen's  "  Little  Eyolf  "  there  is  a  beautiful  and  appo- 
site passage. 

"  Rita.  '  After  all,  we  are  only  human  beings.' 

"  Allmers.  '  But  we  have  some  kinship  with  the  sky  and 
the  sea,  Rita.' 

"  Rita.  *  You,  perhaps  ;  not  me.'  " 

Woman,  according  to  the  poet,  according  to  Buddha,  and 
in  my  interpretation,  has  no  relation  to  the  all,  to  the  world 
whole,  to  God.  Is  she  then  human,  or  an  animal,  or  a 
plant  ? 

Anatomists  will  find  the  question  ridiculous,  and  will  at 
once  dismiss  the  philosophy  which  could  lead  up  to  such  a 
possibility.  For  them  woman  is  the  female  of  Homo 
sapiens,  differentiated  from  all  other  living  beings,  and 
occupying  the  same  position  with  regard  to  the  human 
male  that  the  females  of  other  species  occupy  with  regard 
to  their  males.  And  he  will  not  allow  the  philosopher  to 
say,  "  What  has  the  anatomist  to  do  with  me  ?  Let  him 
mind  his  own  business." 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  women  are  sisters  of  the  flowers,  and 
are  in  close  relationship  with  the  animals.     Many  of  their 


WOMAN  AND  HER  SIGNIFICANCE      291 

sexual  perversities  and  affections  for  animals  (Pasiphäe  myth 
and  Leda  myth)  indicate  this.  But  they  are  human  beings. 
Even  the  absolute  woman,  whom  we  think  of  as  without 
any  trace  of  intelligible  ego,  is  still  the  complement  of  man. 
And  there  is  no  doubt  that  the  fact  of  the  special  sexual  and 
erotic  completion  of  the  human  male  by  the  human  female, 
even  if  it  is  not  the  moral  phenomenon  which  advocates  of 
marriage  would  have  us  believe,  is  still  of  tremendous  import- 
ance to  the  woman  problem.  Animals  are  mere  individuals  ; 
women  are  persons,  although  they  are  not  personalities. 

An  appearance  of  discriminative  power,  though  not  the 
reality,  language,  though  not  conversation,  memory,  though 
it  has  no  continuity  or  unity  of  consciousness — must  all  be 
granted  to  them. 

They  possess  counterfeits  of  everything  masculine,  and 
thus  are  subject  to  those  transformations  which  the  de- 
fenders of  womanliness  are  so  fond  of  quoting.  The  result 
of  this  is  a  sort  of  amphi-sexuality  of  many  ideas  (honour, 
shame,  love,  imagination,  fear,  sensibility,  and  so  on),  which 
have  both  a  masculine  and  feminine  significance. 

There  now  remains  to  discuss  the  real  meaning  of  the 
contrast  between  the  sexes. 

The  parts  played  by  the  male  and  female  principles  in  the 
animal  and  vegetable  kingdoms  are  not  now  under  con- 
sideration ;  we  are  dealing  solely  with  humanity. 

That  such  principles  of  maleness  and  femaleness  must  be 
accepted  as  theoretical  conceptions,  and  not  as  metaphysical 
ideas,  was  the  point  of  this  investigation  from  the  beginning. 
The  whole  object  of  the  book  has  been  to  settle  the  question, 
in  man  at  least,  of  the  really  important  differences  between 
man  and  woman,  quite  apart  from  the  mere  physiological- 
sexual-differentiation.  Furthermore,  the  view  which  sees 
nothmg  more  in  the  fact  of  the  dualism  of  the  sexes  than 
an  arrangement  for  physiological  division  of  labour — an 
idea  tor  which,  I  believe,  the  zoologist,  Milne-Edwards,  is 
responsible — appears,  according  to  this  work,  quite  unten- 
able ;  and  it  is  useless  to  waste  time  discussing  such  a 
superficial  and  mtellectually  complacent  view. 


292  SEX  AND  CHARACTER 

Darwinism,  indeed,  is  responsible  for  making  popular  the 
view  that  sexually  differentiated  organisms  have  been  de- 
rived from  earlier  stages  in  which  there  was  no  sexual 
dimorphism  ;■  but  long  before  Darwin,  Gustav  Theodor 
Fechner  had  already  shown  that  the  sexes  could  not  be 
supposed  to  have  arisen  from  an  undifferentiated  stage  by 
any  principle  such  as  division  of  labour,  adaptation  to  the 
struggle  for  existence,  and  so  forth. 

The  ideas  "  man  "  and  "  woman  "  cannot  be  investigated 
separately  ;  their  significance  can  be  found  out  only  by 
placing  them  side  by  side  and  contrasting  them.  The  key 
to  their  natures  must  be  found  in  their  relations  to  each 
other.  In  attempting  to  discover  the  nature  of  erotics  I 
went  a  Itttle  way  into  this  subject.  The  relation  of  man  to 
woman  is  simply  that  of  subject  to  object.  Woman  seeks 
her  consummation  as  the  object.  She  is  the  plaything  of 
husband  or  child,  and,  however  we  may  try  to  hide  it,  she 
is  anxious  to  be  nothing  but  such  a  chattel. 

No  one  misunderstands  so  thoroughly  what  a  woman 
wants  as  he  who  tries  to  find  out  what  is  passing  within 
her,  endeavouring  to  share  her  feelings  and  hopes,  her 
experiences  and  her  real  nature. 

Woman  does  not  wish  to  be  treated  as  an  active  agent ; 
she  wants  to  remain  always  and  throughout — this  is  just  her 
womanhood — purely  passive,  to  feel  herself  under  another's 
will.  She  demands  only  to  be  desired  physically,  to  be 
taken  possession  of,  like  a  new  property. 

Just  as  mere  sensation  only  attains  reality  when  it  is 
apprehended,  i.e.,  when  it  becomes  objective,  so  a  woman 
is  brought  to  a  sense  of  her  existence  only  by  her  husband 
or  children — by  these  as  subjects  to  whom  she  is  the  object 
— so  obtaining  the  gift  of  an  existence. 

The  contrast  between  the  subject  and  the  object  in  the 
theory  of  knowledge  corresponds  ontologically  to  the  con- 
trast between  form  and  matter.  It  is  no  more  than  a 
translation  of  this  distinction  from  the  theory  of  experience 
to  metaphysics.  Matter,  which  in  itself  is  absolutely  unindi- 
vidualised  and  so  can  assume  any  form,  of  itself  has  no 


WOMAN  AND  HER  SIGNIFICANCE      293 

definite  and  lasting  qualities,  and  has  as  little  essence  as 
mere  perception,  the  matter  of  experience,  has  in  itself  any 
existence.  If  the  Platonic  conception  is  followed  out,  it  will 
be  apparent  that  that  great  thinker  asserted  to  be  nothing 
what  the  ordinary  Philistine  regards  as  the  highest  form  of 
reality.  According  to  Pinto,  the  negation  of  existence  is  no 
other  than  matTcr .  Form  is  the  only  real  existence.  Aristotle 
carried  the  Piatomc  conception  into  the  regions  of  biology. 
For  Plato  form  is  the  parent  and  creator  of  all  reality.  For 
Aristotle,  in  the  sexual  process  the  male  principle  is  the 
active,  formative  agent,  the  female  principle  the  passive 
matter  on  which  the  form  is  impressed.  In  my  view,  the 
significance  of  woman  in  humanity  is  explained  by  the 
Platonic  and  Aristotelian  conception.  Woman  is  the 
material  on  which  man  acts.  Man  as  the  microcosm 
is  compounded  of  the  lower  and  higher  life.  Woman  is 
matter,  is  nothing.  This  knowledge  gives  us  the  keystone 
to  our  structure,  and  it  makes  everything  clear  that  was 
indistinct,  it  gives  things  a  coherent  form.  Woman's  sexual 
part  depends  on  contact;  it  is  the  absorbing  and  not  the 
liberating  impulse.  It  coincides  with  this,  that  the  keenest 
sense  woman  has,  and  the  only  one  she  has  more  highly 
developed  than  man,  is  the  sense  of  touch.  The  eye  and 
the  ear  lead  to  the  unlimited  and  give  glimpses  of  infinity; 
the  sense  of  touch  necessitates  physical  limitations  to  our 
own  actions  :  one  is  affected  by  what  one  feels  ;  it  is  the 
eminently  sordid  sense,  and  suited  to  the  physical  require- 
ments of  an  earth-bound  being. 

Man  is  form,  woman  is  matter:  if  that  is  so  it  must  find 
expression  in  the  relations  between  their  respective  psychic 
txperiences. 

The  summing  up  of  the  connected  nature  of  man's 
mental  life,  as  opposed  to  the  inarticulate  and  chaotic  con- 
dition of  woman's,  illustrates  the  above  antithesis  of  form 
and  matter. 

Matter  needs  to  be  formed :  and  thus  woman  demands 
that  man  should  clear  her  confusion  of  thought,  give 
meaning  to  her  benid   ideas.     Women  are  matter,  which 


294  SEX  AND  CHARACTER 

can  assume  any  shape.  Those  experiments  which  ascribe 
to  girls  a  better  memory  for  learning  by  rote  than  boys  are 
explained  in  this  way  :  they  are  due  to  the  nullity  and 
inanity  of  women,  who  can  be  saturated  with  anything  and 
everything,  whilst  man  only  retains  what  has  an  interest 
for  him,  forgetting  all  else. 

This  accounts  for  what  has  been  called  woman's  submis- 
siveness,  the  way  she  is  influenced  by  the  opinions  of  others, 
her  suggestibility,  the  way  in  which  man  moulds  her  formless 
nature.  Woman  is  nothing  ;  therefore,  and  only,  therefore, 
she  can  become  everythmg,  whilst  man  can  only  remain 
what  he  is.  A  man  can  make  what  he  likes  of  a  woman  : 
the  most  a  woman  can  do  is  to  help  a  man  to  achieve  what 
he  wants. 

A  man's  real  nature  is  never  altered  by  education  :  woman, 
on  the  other  hand,  by  external  influences,  can  be  taught  to 
suppress  her  most  characteristic  self,  the  real  value  she  sets 
on  sexuaUty. 

Woman  can  appear  everything  and  deny  everything,  but 
in  reality  she  is  never  anything. 

Women  have  neither  this  nor  that  characteristic  ;  their 
peculiarity  consists  in  having  no  characteristics  at  all ;  the 
complexity  and  terrible  mystery  about  women  come  to  this  ; 
it  is  this  which  makes  them  above  and  beyond  man's  under- 
standing— man,  who  always  wants  to  get  to  the  heart  of 
things. 

It  may  be  said,  even  by  those  who  may  wish  to  agree 
with  the  foregoing  arguments,  that  they  have  not  indicated 
what  man  really  is.  Has  he  any  special  male  characteristics, 
like  match-making  and  want  of  character  in  women  ?  Is 
there  a  definite  idea  of  what  man  is,  as  there  is  of  woman, 
and  can  this  idea  be  similarly  formulated  ? 

Here  is  the  answer  :  The  idea  of  maleness  consists  in  the 
fact  of  an  individuality,  of  an  essential  monad,  and  is  covered 
by  it.  Each  monad,  however,  is  as  different  as  possible  from 
every  other  monad,  and  therefore  cannot  be  classified  in 
one  comprehensive  idea  common  to  many  other  monads. 
Man  is  the  microcosm  ;  he  contains  all  kinds  of  possibilities. 


WOMAN  AND  HER  SIGNIFICANCE      295 

This  must  not  be  confused  with  the  universal  susceptibility 
of  woman  who  becomes  all  without  being  anything,  whilst 
man  is  all,  as  much  or  as  httle,  according  to  his  gifts,  as  he 
will.  Man  contains  woman,  for  he  contains  matter,  and  he' 
can  allow  this  part  of  his  nature  to  develop  itself,  i.e.,  to 
thrive  and  enervate  him  ;  or  he  can  recognise  and  fight 
against  it— so  that  he,  and  he  alone,  can  get  at  the  truth 
about  woman.    But  woman  cannot  develop  except  through 

man. 

The  meaning  of  man  and  woman  is  first  arrived  at  when 
we  examine  their  mutual  sexual  and  erotic  relations. 
Woman's  deepest  desire  is  to  be  formed  by  man,  and  so  to 
receive  her  being.  Woman  desires  that  man  should  impart 
opinions  to  her  quite  different  to  those  she  held  before^ 
she  is  content  to  let  herself  be  turned  by  him  from  what  she 
had  till  then  thought  right.  She  wishes  to  be  taken  ta 
pieces  as  a  whole,  so  that  he  may  build  her  up  again. 

Woman  is  tirst  created  by  man's  will— he  dominates  her 
and  changes  her  whole  being  (hypnotism).  Here  is  the 
explanation  of  the  relation  of  the  psychical  to  the  physical 
in  man  and  woman.  Man  assumes  a  reciprocal  action  of 
body  and  mind,  in  the  bense  rather  that  the  dominant  mind 
creates  the  body,  than  that  the  mind  merely  projects  itself 
on  phenomena,  whilst  the  woman  accepts  both  mental  and 
psychical  phenomena  empirically.  None  the  less,  even 
in  the  woman  there  is  some  reciprocal  action.  However, 
whilst  in  the  man,  as  Schopenhauer  truly  taught,  the  human 
being  is  his  own  creation,  his  own  will  makes  and  re-makes 
the  body,  the  woman  is  bodily  influenced  and  changed  by 
an  alien  will  (suggestion). 

Man  not  ouly  forms  himself,  but  woman  also— a  far  easier 
matter.  The  myhs  of  the  book  of  Genesis  and  other  cos- 
mogonies, which  teach  that  woman  was  created  out  of  man, 
are  nearer  the  truth  than  the  biological  theories  of  descent, 
according  to  which  males  have  been  evolved  from  females. 

We  have  now  to  come  to  the  question  left  open  m 
Chapter  IX.,  as  to  how  woman,  who  is  herself  without  soul 
or  will,  is  yet  able  to  realise  to  what  extent  a  man  may  be 


296  SEX  AND  CHARACTER 

endowed  with  them  ;  and  we  may  now  endeavour  to  answer 
it.  Of  this  one  must  be  certain,  that  what  woman  notices, 
that  for  which  she  has  a  sense,  is  not  the  special  nature  of 
man,  but  only  the  general  fact  and  possibly  the  grade  of  his 
maleness.  It  is  quite  erroneous  to  suppose  that  woman  has 
an  innate  capacity  to  understand  the  individuality  of  a  man. 
The  lover,  who  is  so  easily  fooled  by  the  unconscious  simu- 
lation of  a  deeper  comprehension  on  the  part  of  his  sweet- 
heart, may  believe  that  he  understands  himself  through  a 
girl ;  but  those  who  are  less  easily  satisfied  cannot  help 
seeing  that  women  only  possess  a  sense  of  the  fact  not  of 
the  individuality  of  the  soul,  only  for  the  formal  general 
fact,  not  for  the  differentiation  of  the  personality.  In  order 
to  perceive  and  apperceive  the  special  form,  matter  must  not 
itself  be  formless  ;  woman's  relation  to  man,  however,  is 
nothing  but  that  of  matter  to  form,  and  her  comprehension 
of  him  nothing  but  willingness  to  be  as  much  formed  as 
possible  by  him  ;  the  instinct  of  those  without  existence  for 
existence.  Furthermore,  this  "  comprehension "  is  not 
theoretical,  it  is  not  sympathetic,  it  is  only  a  desire  to  be 
sympathetic  ;  it  is  importunate  and  egoistical.  Woman  has 
no  relation  to  man  and  no  sense  of  man,  but  only  for  male- 
ness ;  and  if  she  is  to  be  considered  as  more  sexual  than 
man,  this  greater  claim  is  nothing  but  the  intense  desire  for 
the  fullest  and  most  definite  formation,  it  is  the  demand  for 
the  greatest  possible  quantity  of  existence. 

And,  finally,  match-making  is  nothing  else  than  this.  The 
sexuality  of  women  is  super-individual,  because  they  are  not 
limited,  formed,  individualised  entities,  in  the  higher  sense 
of  the  word. 

The  supremest  moment  in  a  woman's  life,  when  her 
original  nature,  her  natural  desire  manifests  itself,  is  that  in 
which  her  own  sexual  union  takes  place.  She  embraces  the 
man  passionately  and  presses  him  to  her  ;  it  is  the  greatest 
joy  of  passivity,  stronger  even  than  the  contented  feeling  of  a 
hypnotised  person,  the  desire  of  matter  which  has  just  been 
formed,  and  wishes  to  keep  that  form  for  ever.  That  is  why 
a  woman  is  so  grateful  to  her  possessor,  even  if  the  gratitude 


WOMAN  AND  HER  SIGNIFICANCE      297 

is  limited  to  the  moment,  as  in  the  case  of  prostitutes  with 
no  memory,  or,  if  it  lasts  longer,  as  in  the  case  of  more 
highly  differentiated  women. 

This  endless  striving  of  the  poor  to  attach  themselves  to 
riches,  the  altogether  formless  and  therefore  super-individual 
striving  of  the  inarticulate  to  obtain  form  by  contact,  to  keep 
it  indefinitely  and  so  gain  an  existence,  is  the  deepest  motive 
in  pairing. 

Pairing  is  only  possible  because  woman  is  not  a  monad, 
and  has  no  sense  of  individuality  ;  it  is  the  endless  striving 
of  nothing  to  be  something. 

I  It  is  thus  that  the  duality  of  man  and  woman  has 
'  gradually  developed  into  complete  dualism,  to  the  dualism 
of  the  higher  and  lower  lives,  of  subject  and  object,  of 
form  and  matter,  something  and  nothing.  All  meta- 
physical, all  transcendental  existence  is  logical  and  moral 
existence ;  woman  is  non-logical  and  non-moral.  She  has 
no  dislike  for  what  is  logical  and  moral,  she  is  not  anti- 
logical,  she  is  not  anti-moral.  She  is  not  the  negation,  she 
is,  rather,  nothing.  She  is  neither  the  affirmation  nor  the 
denial.  A  man  has  in  himself  the  possibility  of  being  the 
absolute  something  or  the  absolute  nothing,  and  therefore 
his  actions  are  directed  towards  the  one  or  the  other  ;  woman 
does  not  sin,  for  she  herself  is  the  sin  which  is  a  possibility 
in  man. 

The  abstract  male  is  the  image  of  God,  the  absolute  some- 
thing; the  female,  and  the  female  element  in  the  male,  is  the 
symbol  of  nothing  ;  that  is  the  significance  of  the  woman 
in  the  universe,  and  in  this  way  male  and  female  complete 
and  condition  one  another.  Woman  has  a  meaning  and  a 
function  in  the  universe  as  the  opposite  of  man  ;  and  as 
the  human  male  surpasses  the  animal  male,  so  the  human 
female  surpasses  the  female  of  zoology.  It  is  not  that 
limited  existence  and  limited  negation  (as  in  the  animal 
kingdom)  are  at  war  in  humanity  ;  what  there  stand  in 
opposition  are  unlimited  existence  and  unlimited  negation. 
And  so  male  and  female  make  up  humanity. 

The  meaning  of  woman  is  to  be  meaningless.    She  repre- 


298  SEX  AND  CHARACTER 

sents  negation,  the  opposite  pole  from  the  Godhead,  the 
other  possibility  of  humanity.  And  so  nothing  is  so  despic- 
able as  a  man  become  female,  and  such  a  person  will  be 
regarded  as  the  supreme  criminal  even  by  himself.  And 
so  also  is  to  be  explained  the  deepest  fear  of  man  ;  the  fear 
of  the  woman,  which  is  the  fear  of  unconsciousness,  the 
alluring  abyss  of  annihilation. 

An  old  woman  manifests  once  for  all  what  woman  really 
is.  The  beauty  of  woman,  as  may  be  experimentally  proved, 
is  only  created  by  love  of  a  man  ;  a  woman  becomes  more 
beautiful  when  a  man  loves  her  because  she  is  passively 
responding  to  the  will  which  is  in  her  lover  ;  however 
deep  this  may  sound,  it  is  only  a  matter  of  everyday 
experience. 

All  the  qualities  of  woman  depend  on  her  non-existence, 
on  her  want  of  character ;  because  she  has  no  true,  per- 
manent, but  only  a  mortal  life,  in  her  character  as  the 
advocate  of  pairing  she  furthers  the  sexual  part  of  life,  and 
is  fundamentally  transformed  by  and  susceptible  to  the  man 
who  has  a  physical  influence  over  her. 

Thus  the  three  fundamental  characters  of  woman  with 
which  this  chapter  has  dealt  come  together  in  the  con- 
ception of  her  as  the  non-existent.  Her  instability  and 
untruthfulness  are  only  negative  deductions  from  the 
premiss  of  her  non-existence.  Her  only  positive  character, 
the  conception  of  her  as  the  pairing  agent,  comes  from  it 
by  a  simple  process  of  analysis.  The  nature  of  woman  is 
no  more  than  pairing,  no  more  than  super-individual 
sexuality. 

If  we  turn  to  the  table  of  the  two  kinds  of  life  given 
earlier  in  this  chapter,  it  will  be  apparent  that  every  inclina- 
tion from  the  higher  to  the  lower  is  a  crime  against  oneself. 
Immorality  is  the  will  towards  negation,  the  craving  to 
change  the  formed  into  the  formless,  the  wish  for 
destruction.  And  from  this  comes  the  intimate  relation 
between  femaleness  and  crime.  There  is  a  close  relation 
between  the  immoral  and  the  non-moral.  It  is  only  when 
man  accepts  his  own  sexuality,  denies  the  absolute  in  him, 


i  WOMAN  AND  HER  SIGNIFICANCE      299 

turns  to  the  lower,  that  he  gives  woman  existence.  The 
acceptance  of  the  Phallus  is  immoral.  It  has  always  been 
thought  of  as  hateful  ;  it  has  been  the  image  of  Satan,  and 
Dante  made  it  the  central  pillar  of  hell. 

Thus  comes  about  the  domination  of  the  male  sexuaHty 
over  the  female.  It  is  only  when  man  is  sexual  that  woman 
has  existence  and  meaning. 

Her  existence  is  bound  up  with  the  Phallus,  and  so  tliat 
is  her  supreme  lord  and  welcome  master. 

Sex,  in  the  form  of  man,  is  woman's  fate  ;  the  Don  Juan 
is  the  only  type  of  man  who  has  complete  power  over  her. 

The  curse,  which  was  said  to  be  heavy  on  woman,  is  the 
evil  will  of  man  :  nothing  is  only  a  tool  in  the  hand  of  the 
will  for  nothing.  The  early  Fathers  expressed  it  pathetically 
when  they  called  woman  the  handmaid  of  the  devil.  For 
matter  in  itself  is  nothing,  it  can  only  obtain  existence 
through  form.  The  fall  of  "  form  "  is  the  corruption  that 
takes  place  when  form  endeavours  to  relapse  into  the  form- 
less. When  man  became  sexual  he  formed  woman.  That 
woman  is  at  all  has  happened  simply  because  man  has 
accepted  his  sexuality.  Woman  is  merely  the  result  of  this 
affirmation  ;  she  is  sexuality  itself.  Woman's  existence  is 
dependent  on  man  ;  when  man,  as  man,  in  contradistinction 
to  woman,  is  sexual,  he  is  giving  woman  form,  calling  her 
into  existence.  Therefore  woman's  one  object  must  be  to 
keep  man  sexual.  She  desires  man  as  Phallus,  and  for  this 
she  is  the  advocate  of  pairing.  She  is  incapable  of  making 
use  of  any  creature  except  as  a  means  to  an  end,  the  end 
being  pairing  ;  and  she  has  but  one  purpose,  that  of  con- 
tinuing the  guilt  of  man,  for  she  would  disappear  the 
moment  man  had  overcome  his  sexuality. 

Man  created  woman,  and  will  always  create  her  afresh, 
as  long  as  he  is  sexual.  Just  as  he  gives  woman  con- 
sciousness, so  he  gives  her  existence.  Woman  is  the  sin  of 
man. 

He  tries  to  pay  the  debt  by  love.  Here  we  have  the 
explanation  of  what  seemed  like  an  obscure  myth  at  the 
end  of  the  previous  chapter.  Now  we  see  what  was  hidden  in 


300  SEX  AND  CHARACTER 

il  :  that  woman  is  nothing  before  man's  fall,  nor  without  it ; 
that  he  does  not  rob  her  of  anything  she  had  before.  The 
crime  man  has  committed  in  creating  woman,  and  still 
commits  in  assenting  to  her  purpose,  he  excuses  to  woman 
by  his  eroticism. 

Whence  otherwise  would  come  the  generosity  of  love, 
which  can  never  be  satisfied  by  giving  ?  How  is  it  that 
love  is  so  anxious  to  endow  woman  with  a  soul,  and  not 
any  other  creature  ?  Whence  comes  it  that  a  child  cannot 
love  until  love  coincides  with  sexuality,  the  stage  of  puberty, 
with  the  repeated  forming  of  woman,  with  the  renewing  of 
sin  ?  Woman  is  nothing  but  man's  expression  and  projec- 
tion of  his  own  sexuality.  Every  man  creates  himself  a 
woman,  in  which  he  embodies  himself  and  his  own  guilt. 

But  woman  is  not  herself  guilty  ;  she  is  made  so  by  the 
guilt  of  others,  and  everything  for  which  woman  is  blamed 
should  be  laid  at  man's  door. 

Love  strives  to  cover  guilt,  instead  of  conquering  it ;  it 
elevates  woman  instead  of  nullifying  her.  The  "something" 
folds  the  **  nothing"  in  its  arms,  and  thinks  thus  to  free  the 
universe  of  negation  and  drown  all  objections ;  whereas 
the  nothing  would  only  disappear  if  the  something  put  it 
away. 

Since  man's  hatred  for  woman  is  not  conscious  hatred  of 
his  own  sexuality,  his  love  is  his  most  intense  effort  to  save 
woman  as  woman,  instead  of  desiring  to  nullify  her  in 
himself.  And  the  consciousness  of  guilt  comes  from  the 
fact  that  the  object  of  guilt  is  coveted  instead  of  being 
annihilated. 

Woman  alone,  then,  is  guilt ;  and  is  so  through  man's 
fault.  And  if  femaleness  signifies  pairing,  it  is  only  because 
all  guilt  endeavours  to  increase  its  circle.  What  woman, 
always  unconsciously,  accomplishes,  she  does  because  she 
cannot  help  it  ;  it  is  her  reason  for  being,  her  whole  nature. 
She  is  only  a  part  of  man,  his  other,  ineradicable,  his  lower 
part.  So  matter  appears  to  be  as  inexplicable  a  riddle  as 
form  ;  woman  as  unending  as  man,  negation  as  eternal  as 
existence ;  but  this  eternity  is  only  the  eternity  of  guilt. 


CHAPTER   XIII 

JUDAISM 

It  would  not  be  surprising  if  to  many  it  should  seem  from 
the  foregoing  arguments  that  "  men  "  have  come  out  of 
them  too  well,  and,  as  a  collective  body,  have  been  placed 
on  an  exaggeratedly  lofty  pedestal.  The  conclusions  drawn 
from  these  arguments,  however  surprised  every  Philistine 
and  young  simpleton  would  be  to  learn  that  in  himself  he 
comprises  the  whole  world,  cannot  be  opposed  and  con- 
futed by  cheap  reasoning  ;  yet  the  treatment  of  the  male 
sex  must  not  simply  be  considered  too  indulgent,  or  due 
to  a  direct  tendency  to  omit  all  the  repulsive  and  small  side 
of  manhood  in  order  to  favourably  represent  its  best  points. 
The  accusation  would  be  unjustified.  It  does  not  enter 
the  author's  mind  to  idealise  man  in  order  more  easily  to 
lower  the  estimation  of  woman.  So  much  narrowness  and 
so  much  coarseness  often  thrive  beneath  the  empirical 
representation  of  manhood  that  it  is  a  question  of  the  better 
possibilities  lying  in  every  man,  neglected  by  him  or  per- 
ceived either  with  painful  clearness  or  dull  animosity  ;  pos- 
sibilities which  as  such  in  woman  neither  actually  nor 
meditatively  ever  come  to  any  account.  And  here  the 
author  cannot  in  any  wise  really  rely  on  the  dissimilarities 
between  men,  however  little  he  may  impugn  their  import- 
ance. It  is,  therefore,  a  question  of  establishing  what 
woman  is  not,  and  truly  in  her  there  is  infinitely  much  want- 
ing which  is  never  quite  missing  even  in  the  most  mediocre 
and  plebeian  of  men.  That  which  is  the  positive  attribute  of 
the  woman,  in  so  far  as  a  positive  can  be  spoken  of  in  re- 
gard to  such  a  being,  will  constantly  be  found  also  in  many 


302  SEX  AND  CHARACTER 

men.  There  are,  as  has  already  often  been  demonstrated, 
men  who  have  become  women  or  have  remained  women; 
but  there  is  no  woman  who  has  surpassed  certain  circum- 
scribed, not  particularly  elevated  moral  and  intellectual 
limits.  And,  therefore,  I  must  again  assert  that  the  woman 
of  the  highest  standard  is  immeasurably  beneath  the  man 
of  lowest  standard. 

These  objections  may  go  even  further  and  touch  a  pK)int 
where  the  ignoring  of  theory  must  assuredly  become  repre- 
hensible. There  are,  to  wit,  nations  and  races  whose  men, 
though  they  can  in  no  wise  be  regarded  as  intermediate 
forms  of  the  sexes,  are  found  to  approach  so  slightly  and 
so  rarely  to  the  ideal  of  manhood  as  set  forth  in  my  argu- 
ment, that  the  principles,  indeed  the  entire  foundation  on 
which  this  work  rests,  would  seem  to  be  severely  shaken 
by  their  existence.  What  shall  we  make,  for  example,  out 
of  the  Chinese,  with  their  feminine  freedom  from  internal 
cravings  and  their  incapacity  for  every  effort  ?  One 
might  feel  tempted  to  believe  in  the  complete  effeminacy 
of  the  whole  race.  It  can  at  least  be  no  mere  whim  of  the 
entire  nation  that  the  Chinaman  habitually  wears  a  pigtail, 
and  that  the  growth  of  his  beard  is  of  the  very  thinnest. 
But  how  does  the  matter  stand  with  the  negroes  ?  A  genius 
has  perhaps  scarcely  ever  appeared  amongst  the  negroes, 
and  the  standard  of  their  morality  is  almost  universally  so 
low  that  it  is  beginning  to  be  acknowledged  in  America 
that  their  emancipation  was  an  act  of  imprudence. 

If,  consequently,  the  principle  of  the  intermediate  forms 
of  the  sexes  may  perhaps  enjoy  a  prospect  of  becoming  of 
importance  to  racial  anthropology  (since  in  some  peoples 
a  greater  share  of  womanishness  would  seem  to  be  generally 
disseminated),  it  must  yet  be  conceded  that  the  foregoing 
deductions  refer  above  all  to  Aryan  men  and  Aryan  women. 
In  how  far,  in  the  other  great  races  of  mankind,  uniformity 
with  the  standard  of  the  Aryan  race  may  reign,  or  what  has 
prevented  and  hindered  this  ;  to  arrive  more  nearly  at  such 
knowledge  would  require  in  the  first  instance  the  most 
intense  research  into  racial  characteristics. 


JUDAISM  303 

The  Jewish  race,  which  has  been  chosen  by  me  as  a  sub- 
ject of  discussion,  because,  as  will  be  shown,  it  presents 
the  gravest  and  most  formidable  difficulties  for  my  views, 
appears  to  possess  a  certain  anthropological  relationship 
with  both  negroes  and  Mongolians.  The  readily  curling 
hair  points  to  the  negro  ;  admixture  of  Mongolian  blood 
is  suggested  by  the  perfectly  Chinese  or  Malay  formation  of 
face  and  skull  which  is  so  often  to  be  met  with  amongst 
the  Jews  and  which  is  associated  with  a  yellowish  com- 
plexion. This  is  nothing  more  than  the  result  of  everyday 
experience,  and  these  remarks  must  not  be  otherwise 
understood ;  the  anthropological  question  of  the  origin 
of  the  Jewish  race  is  apparently  insoluble,  and  even  such 
an  interesting  answer  to  it  as  that  given  by  H.  S.  Chamber- 
lain has  recently  met  with  much  opposition.  The  author 
does  not  possess  the  knowledge  necessary  to  treat  of  this  ; 
what  will  be  here  briefly,  but  as  far  as  possible  profoundly 
analysed,  is  the  psychical  peculiarity  of  the  Jewish  race. 

This  is  an  obligatory  task  imposed  by  psychological 
observation  and  analysis.  It  is  undertaken  independently 
of  past  history,  the  details  of  which  must  be  uncertain. 
The  Jewish  race  offers  a  problem  of  the  deepest  significance 
for  the  study  of  all  races,  and  in  itself  it  is  intimately 
bound  up  with  many  of  the  most  troublesome  problems  of 
the  day. 

I  must,  however,  make  clear  what  I  mean  by  Judaism  ;  I 
mean  neither  a  race  nor  a  people  nor  a  recognised  creed. 
I  think  of  it  as  a  tendency  of  the  mind,  as  a  psychological 
constitution  which  is  a  possibility  for  all  mankind,  but 
which  has  become  actual  in  the  most  conspicuous  fashion 
only  amongst  the  Jews.  Antisemitism  itself  will  confirm 
my  point  of  view. 

The  purest  Aryans  by  descent  and  disposition  are  seldom 
Antisemites,  although  they  are  often  unpleasantly  moved  by 
some  of  the  peculiar  Jewish  traits ;  they  cannot  in  the  least 
understand  the  Antisemite  movement,  and  are,  in  conse- 
quence of  their  defence  of  the  Jews,  often  called  Philo- 
semites ;  and  yet  these  persons  writing  on  the  subject  of 


304  SEX  AND  CHARACTER 

the  hatred  of  Jews,  have  been  guilty  of  the  most  profound 
misunderstanding  of  the  Jewish  character.  The  aggressive 
Antisemites,  on  the  other  hand,  nearly  always  display  certain 
Jewish  characters,  sometimes  apparent  in  their  faces,  al- 
though they  may  have  no  real  admixture  of  Jewish  blood.* 

The  explanation  is  simple.  People  love  in  others  the 
qualities  they  would  like  to  have  but  do  not  actually  have  in 
any  great  degree  ;  so  also  we  hate  in  others  only  what  we 
do  not  wish  to  be,  and  what  notwithstanding  we  are  partly. 
We  hate  only  qualities  to  which  we  approximate,  but  which 
we  realise  first  in  other  persons. 

Thus  the  fact  is  explained  that  the  bitterest  Antisemites 
are  to  be  found  amongst  the  jews  themselves.  For  only 
the  quite  Jewish  Jews,  like  the  completely  Aryan  Aryans,  are 
not  at  all  Antisemitically  disposed  ;  among  the  remainder 
only  the  commoner  natures  are  actively  Antisemitic  and 
pass  sentence  on  others  without  having  once  sat  in  judg- 
ment on  themselves  in  these  matters ;  and  very  few  exercise 
their  Antisemitism  first  on  themselves.  This  one  thing, 
however,  remains  none  the  less  certain  :  whoever  detests 
the  Jewish  disposition  detests  it  first  of  all  in  himself ;  that 
he  should  persecute  it  in  others  is  merely  his  endeavour  to 
separate  himself  in  this  way  from  Jewishness  ;  he  strives  to 
slj^ke  it  off  and  to  localise  it  in  his  fellow-creatures,  and  so 
for  a  moment  to  dream  himself  free  of  it.  Hatred,  like 
love,  is  a  projected  phenomenon;  that  person  alone  is  haled 
who  reminds  one  unpleasantly  of  oneself. 

The  Antisemitism  of  the  Jews  bears  testimony  to  the 
fact  that  no  one  who  has  had  experience  of  them  considers 
them  loveable — not  even  the  Jew  himself ;  the  Antisemi- 
tism of    the  Aryans  grants  us  an  insight    no  less  full  of 

*  Zola  was  a  typical  case  of  a  person  absolutely  without  trace  of 
the  Jewish  qualities,  and,  therefore,  a  philosemite.  The  greatest 
geniuses,  on  the  other  hand,  have  nearly  always  been  antisemites 
(Tacitus,  Pascal,  Voltaire,  Herder,  Goethe,  Kant,  Jean  Paul, 
Schopenhauer,  Grillparzer,  Wagner)  ;  this  comes  about  from  the 
fact  as  geniuses  they  have  something  of  everything  in  their  natures, 
and  so  can  understand  Judaism. 


'  JUDAISM  305 

significance  :  it  is  that  the  Jew  and  the  Jewish  race  must 
not  be  confounded.  There  are  Aryans  who  are  more  Jewish 
than  Jews,  and  real  Jews  who  are  more  Aryan  than  certain 
Aryans.  I  need  not  enumerate  those  non-semites  who  had 
much  Jewishness  in  them,  the  lesser  (like  the  well-known 
Frederick  Nicolai  of  the  eighteenth  century)  nor  those  of 
moderate  greatness  (here  Frederick  Schiller  can  scarcely 
be  omitted),  nor  will  I  analyse  their  Jewishness.  Above  all 
Richard  Wagner — the  bitterest  Antisemite — cannot  be  held 
free  from  an  accretion  of  Jewishness  even  in  his  art,  how- 
ever little  one  be  misled  by  the  feeling  which  sees  in  him 
the  greatest  artist  enshrined  in  historical  humanity ;  and 
this,  though  indubitably  his  Siegfried  is  the  most  un- 
Jewish  type  imaginable.  As  Wagner's  aversion  to  grand 
opera  and  the  stage  really  led  to  the  strongest  attraction,  an 
attraction  of  which  he  was  himself  conscious,  so  his  music, 
which,  in  the  unique  simplicity  of  its  motifs,  is  the  most 
powerful  in  the  world,  cannot  be  declared  free  from  obtru- 
siveness,  loudness,  and  lack  of  distinction  ;  from  some  con- 
sciousness of  this  Wagner  tried  to  gain  coherence  by  the 
extreme  instrumentation  of  his  works.  It  cannot  be  denied 
(there  can  be  no  mistake  about  it)  that  Wagner's  music 
produces  the  deepest  impression  not  only  on  Jewish  Anti- 
semites,  who  have  never  completely  shaken  off  Jewishness, 
but  also  on  Indo-Germanic  Antisemites.  From  the  music 
of  "  Parsifal,"  which  to  genuine  Jews  will  ever  remain  as 
unapproachable  as  its  poetry,  from  the  Pilgrim's  march 
and  the  procession  to  Rome  in  "  Tannhaüser,"  and  assuredly 
from  many  another  part,  they  turn  away.  Doubtless,  also, 
none  but  a  German  could  make  so  clearly  manifest  the 
very  essence  of  the  German  race  as  Wagner  has  succeeded 
in  doing  in  the  "  Meistersingers  of  Nürnberg."  In  Wagner 
one  thinks  constantly  of  that  side  of  his  character  which  leans 
towards  Feuerbach,  instead  of  towards  Schopenhauer. 
Here  no  narrow  psychological  depreciation  of  this  great 
man  is  intended.  Judaism  was  to  him  the  greatest  help  in 
reaching  a  clearer  understanding  and  assertion  of  the 
extremes  within  him  in  his  struggle  to  reach  "  Siegfried"  and 

u 


3o6  SEX  AND  CHARACTER 

"  Parsifal,"  and  in  giving  to  German  nature  the  highest 
means  of  expression  which  has  probably  ever  been  found  in 
the  pages  of  history.  Yet  a  greater  than  Wagner  was  obliged 
to  overcome  the  Jewishness  within  him  before  he  found  his 
special  vocation  ;  and  it  is,  as  previously  stated,  perhaps  its 
great  significance  in  the  world's  history  and  the  immense 
merit  of  Judaism  that  it  and  nothing  else,  leads  the  Aryan 
to  a  knowledge  of  himself  and  warns  him  against  himself. 
For  this  the  Aryan  has  to  thank  the  Jew  that,  through 
him,  he  knows  to  guard  against  Judaism  as  a  possibility 
within  himself.  This  example  will  sufficiently  illustrate  what, 
in  my  estimation,  is  to  be  understood  by  Judaism. 

I  do  not  refer  to  a  nation  or  to  a  race,  to  a  creed  or  to  a 
scripture.  When  I  speak  of  the  Jew  I  mean  neither  an 
individual  nor  the  whole  body,  but  mankind  in  general,  in 
so  far  as  it  has  a  share  in  the  platonic  idea  of  Judaism. 
My  purpose  is  to  analyse  this  idea. 

That  these  researches  should  be  included  in  a  work 
devoted  to  the  characterology  of  the  sexes  may  seem  an 
undue  extension  of  my  subject.  But  some  reflection  will 
lead  to  the  surprising  result  that  Judaism  is  saturated  with 
femininity,  with  precisely  those  qualities  the  essence  of 
which  I  have  shown  to  be  in  the  strongest  opposition  to  the 
male  nature.  It  would  not  be  difficult  to  make  a  case  for 
the  view  that  the  Jew  is  more  saturated  with  femininity 
than  the  Aryan,  to  such  an  extent  that  the  most  manly  Jew 
is  more  feminine  than  the  least  manly  Aryan. 

This  interpretation  would  be  erroneous.  It  is  most 
important  to  lay  stress  on  the  agreements  and  differences 
simply  because  so  many  points  that  become  obvious  in 
dissecting  woman  reappear  in  the  Jew. 

Let  me  begin  with  the  analogies.  It  is  notable  that  the 
Jews,  even  now  when  at  least  a  relative  security  of  tenure  is 
possible,  prefer  moveable  property,  and,  in  spite  of  their 
acquisitiveness,  have  little  real  sense  of  personal  property, 
especially  in  its  most  characteristic  form,  landed  property. 
Property  is  indissolubly  connected  with  the  self,  with 
individuality.     It  is  in  harmony  with  the  foregoing  that  the 


JUDAISM  307 

jew  is  so  readily  disposed  to  communism.  Communism 
must  be  distinguished  clearly  from  socialism,  the  former 
being  based  on  a  community  of  goods,  an  absence  of 
individual  property,  the  latter  meaning,  in  the  first  place  a 
co-operation  of  individual  with  individual,  of  worker  with 
worker,  and  a  recognition  of  human  individuality  in  every 
one.  Socialism  is  Aryan  (Owen,  Carlyle,  Ruskin,  Fichte). 
Communism  is  Jewish  (Marx).  Modern  social  democracy 
has  moved  far  apart  from  the  earlier  socialism,  precisely 
because  Jews  have  taken  so  large  a  share  in  developing  it. 
In  spite  of  the  associative  element  in  it,  the  Marxian 
doctrine  does  not  lead  in  any  way  towards  the  State  as  a 
union  of  all  the  separate  individual  aims,  as  the  higher  unit 
combining  the  purposes  of  the  lower  units.  Such  a  con- 
ception is  as  foreign  to  the  Jew  as  it  is  to  the  woman. 

For  these  reasons  Zionism  must  remain  an  impracticable 
ideal,  notwithstanding  the  fashion  in  which  it  has  brought 
together  some  of  the  noblest  qualities  of  the  Jews.  Zionism 
is  the  negation  of  Judaism,  for  the  conception  of  Judaism 
involves  a  world-wide  distribution  of  the  Jews.  Citizenship 
!  is  an  un-Jewish  thing,  and  there  has  never  been  and  never 
I  will  be  a  true  Jewish  State.  The  State  involves  the  aggrega- 
tion of  individual  aims,  the  formation  of  and  obedience  to 
self-imposed  laws ;  and  the  symbol  of  the  State,  if  nothing 
more,  is  its  head  chosen  by  free  election.  The  opposite 
conception  is  that  of  anarchy,  with  which  present-day 
communism  is  closely  allied.  The  ideal  State  has  never 
been  historically  realised,  but  in  every  case  there  is  at  least 
a  minimum  of  this  higher  unit,  this  conception  of  an  ideal 
power  which  distinguishes  the  State  from  the  mere  collec- 
tion of  human  beings  in  barracks.  Rousseau's  much- 
despised  theory  of  the  conscious  co-operation  of  individuals 
to  form  a  State  deserves  more  attention  than  it  now  receives. 
Some  ethical  notion  of  free  combination  must  always  be 
included. 

The  true  conception  of  the  State  is  foreign  to  the  Jew, 
because  he,  like  the  woman,  is  wanting  in  personality;  his 
failure  to  grasp  the  idea  of  true  society  is  due  to  his  lack  of 


3o8  SEX  AND  CHARACTER 

a  free  intelligible  ego.  Like  women,  Jews  tend  to  adhere 
together,  but  they  do  not  associate  as  free  independent 
individuals  mutually  respecting  each  other's  individuality. 

As  there  is  no  real  dignity  in  women,  so  what  is  meant 
by  the  word  "  gentleman  "  does  not  exist  amongst  the  Jews. 
The  genuine  Jew  fails  in  this  innate  good  breeding  by 
which  alone  individuals  honour  their  own  individuality  and 
respect  that  of  others.  There  is  no  Jewish  nobility,  and 
this  is  the  more  surprising  as  Jewish  pedigrees  can  be  traced 
back  for  thousands  of  years. 

The  familiar  Jewish  arrogance  has  a  similar  explanation; 
it  springs  from  want  of  true  knowledge  of  himself  and  the 
consequent  overpowering  need  he  feels  to  enhance  his  own 
personality  by  depreciating  that  of  his  fellow-creatures. 
And  so,  although  his  descent  is  incomparably  longer  than 
that  of  the  members  of  Aryan  aristocracies,  he  has  an 
inordinate  love  for  titles.  The  Aryan  respect  for  his 
ancestors  is  rooted  in  the  conception  that  they  were  his 
ancestors  ;  it  depends  on  his  valuation  of  his  own  person- 
ality, and,  in  spite  of  the  communistic  strength  and  antiquity 
of  the  Jewish  traditions,  this  individual  sense  of  ancestry  is 
lacking. 

The  faults  of  the  Jewish  race  have  often  been  attributed 
to  the  repression  of  that  race  by  Aryans,  and  many  Chris- 
tians are  still  disposed  to  blame  themselves  in  this  respect. 
But  the  self-reproach  is  not  justified.  Outward  circum- 
stances do  not  mould  a  race  in  one  direction,  unless  there 
is  in  the  race  the  innate  tendency  to  respond  to  the 
moulding  forces  ;  the  total  result  comes  at  least  as  much 
from  the  natural  disposition  as  from  the  modifying  circum- 
stances. We  know  now  that  the  proof  of  the  inheritance 
of  acquired  characters  has  broken  down,  and,  in  the  human 
race  still  more  than  the  lower  forms  of  life,  it  is  certain  that 
individual  and  racial  characters  persist  in  spite  of  all 
adaptive  moulding.  When  men  change,  it  is  from  within, 
outwards,  unless  the  change,  as  in  the  case  of  women,  is  a 
mere  superficial  imitation  of  real  change,  and  is  not  rooted 
in  their  natures.     And  how  can  we  reconcile  the  idea  that 


JUDAISM  309 

the  Jewish  character  is  a  modern  modification  with  the 
history  of  the  foundation  of  the  race,  given  in  the  Old 
Testament  without  any  disapprobation  of  how  the  patriarch 
Jacob  deceived  his  dying  father,  cheated  his  brother  Esau 
and  over-reached  his  father-in-law,  Laban  ? 

The  defenders  of  the  Jew  have  rightly  acquitted  him  of 
any  tendency  to  heinous  crimes,  and  the  legal  statistics  of 
different  countries  confirm  this.  The  Jew  is  not  really 
anti-moral.  But,  none  the  less,  he  does  not  represent  the 
highest  ethical  type.  He  is  rather  non-moral,  neither  very 
good  nor  very  bad,  with  nothing  in  him  of  either  the  angel 
or  the  devil.  Notwithstanding  the  Book  of  Job  and  the 
story  of  Eden,  it  is  plain  that  the  conceptions  of  a  Supreme 
Good  and  a  Supreme  Evil  are  not  truly  Jewish  ;  I  have 
no  wish  to  enter  upon  the  lengthy  and  controversial  topics 
of  Biblical  criticism,  but  at  the  least  I  shall  be  on  sure 
ground  when  I  say  that  these  conceptions  play  the  least 
significant  part  in  modern  Jewish  life.  Orthodox  or  un- 
orthodox, the  modern  Jew  does  not  concern  himself  with 
God  and  the  Devil,  with  Heaven  and  Hell.  If  he  does  not 
reach  the  heights  of  the  Aryan,  he  is  also  less  inclined  to 
commit  murder  or  other  crimes  of  violence. 

So  also  in  the  case  of  the  woman  ;  it  is  easier  for  her 
defenders  to  point  to  the  infrequency  of  her  commission  of 
serious  crimes  than  to  prove  her  intrinsic  morality.  The 
homology  of  Jew  and  woman  becomes  closer  the  further 
examination  goes.  There  is  no  female  devil,  and  no  female 
angel  ;  only  love,  with  its  blind  aversion  from  actuality, 
sees  in  woman  a  heavenly  nature,  and  only  hate  sees  in  her 
a  prodigy  of  wickedness.  Greatness  is  absent  from  the 
nature  of  the  woman  and  the  Jew,  the  greatness  of  morality, 
or  the  greatness  of  evil.  In  the  Aryan  man,  the  good  and 
bad  principles  of  Kant's  religious  philosophy  are  ever  pre- 
sent, ever  in  strife.  In  the  Jew  and  the  woman,  good  and 
evil  are  not  distinct  from  one  another. 

jews,  then,  do  not  live  as  free,  self-governing  individuals, 
choosing  between  virtue  and  vice  in  the  Aryan  fashion. 
They  are  a  mere  collection  of  similar  individuals  each  cast 


3IO  SEX  AND  CHARACTER 

in  the  same  mould,  the  whole  forming  as  it  were  a  con- 
tinuous Plasmodium.  The  Antisemite  has  often  thought  of 
this  as  a  defensive  and  aggressive  union,  and  has  formulated 
the  conception  of  a  Jewish  "  solidarity."  There  is  a  deep 
confusion  here.  When  some  accusation  is  made  against 
some  unknown  member  of  the  Jewish  race,  all  Jews  secretly 
take  the  part  of  the  accused,  and  wish,  hope  for,  and  seek 
to  establish  his  innocence.  But  it  must  not  be  thought 
that  they  are  mteresting  themselves  more  in  the  fate  of  the 
individual  Jew  than  they  would  do  in  the  case  of  an  indi- 
vidual Christian.  It  is  the  menace  to  Judaism  in  general, 
the  fear  that  the  shameful  shadow  may  do  harm  to  Judaism 
as  a  whole,  which  is  the  origin  of  the  apparent  feeling  of 
sympathy.  In  the  same  way,  women  are  delighted  when  a 
member  of  their  sex  is  depreciated,  and  will  themselves 
assist,  until  the  proceeding  seems  to  throw  a  disadvan- 
tageous light  over  the  sex  in  general,  so  frightening  men 
from  marriage.  The  race  or  sex  alone  is  defended,  not  the 
individual. 

It  would  be  easy  to  understand  why  the  family  (in  its 
biological  not  its  legal  sense)  plays  a  larger  role  amongst 
the  Jews  than  amongst  any  other  people ;  the  English, 
who  in  certain  ways  are  akin  to  the  Jews,  coming  next. 
The  family,  in  this  biological  sense,  is  feminine  and  maternal 
in  its  origin,  and  has  no  relation  to  the  State  or  to  society. 
The  fusion,  the  continuity  of  the  members  of  the  family, 
reaches  its  highest  point  amongst  the  Jews.  In  the  Indo- 
Germanic  races,  especially  in  the  case  of  the  more  gifted, 
but  also  in  quite  ordinary  individuals,  there  is  never  com- 
plete harmony  between  father  and  son  ;  consciously,  or 
unconsciously,  there  is  always  in  the  mind  of  the  son  a  cer- 
tain feeling  of  impatience  against  the  man  who,  unasked, 
brought  him  into  the  world,  gave  him  a  name,  and  deter- 
mined his  limitations  in  this  earthly  life.  It  is  only  amongst 
the  Jews  that  the  son  feels  deeply  rooted  in  the  family  and 
IS  fully  at  one  with  his  father.  It  scarcely  ever  happens 
amongst  Christians  that  father  and  son  are  really  friends. 
Amongst  Christians  even  the  daughters  stand  a  little  further 


JUDAISM  311 

apart  from  the  family  circle  than  happens  with  Jewesses, 
and  more  frequently  take  up  some  calling  which  isolates 
them  and  gives  them  independent  interests. 

We  reach  at  this  point  a  fact  in  relation  to  the  argument 
of  the  last  chapter.  I  showed  there  that  the  essential 
element  in  the  pairing  instinct  was  an  indistinct  sense  of 
individuality  and  of  the  limits  between  individuals.  Men 
who  are  match-makers  have  always  a  Jewish  element  in 
them.  The  Jew  is  always  more  absorbed  by  sexual  matters 
than  the  Aryan,  although  he  is  notably  less  potent  sexually 
and  less  liable  to  be  enmeshed  in  a  great  passion.  The  Jews 
are  habitual  match-makers,  and  in  no  race  does  it  so  often 
happen  that  marriages  are  arranged  by  men.  This  kind  of 
activity  is  certainly  peculiarly  necessary  in  their  case,  for,  as 
I  have  alread)-  stated,  there  is  no  people  amongst  which 
marriages  for  love  are  so  rare.  The  organic  disposition  of 
the  Jews  towards  match-making  is  associated  with  their 
racial  failure  to  comprehend  asceticism.  It  is  interesting  to 
note  that  the  Jewish  Rabbis  have  always  been  addicted  to 
speculations  as  to  the  begetting  of  children  and  have  a  rich 
tradition  on  the  subject,  a  natural  result  in  the  case  of  the 
people  who  invented  the  phrase  as  to  the  duty  of  *'  multi- 
plying and  replenishing  the  earth." 

The  pairing  instinct  is  the  great  remover  of  the  limits 
between  individuals;  and  the  Jew,  par  excellence,  is  the 
breaker  down  ot  such  limits.  He  is  at  the  opposite  pole 
from  aristocrats,  with  whom  the  preservation  of  the  limits 
between  individuals  is  the  leading  idea.  The  Jew  is  an 
inborn  communist.  The  Jew's  careless  manners  in  society 
and  his  want  of  social  tact  turn  on  this  quality,  for  the 
reserves  of  social  intercourse  are  simply  barriers  to  protect 
individuality. 

I  desire  at  this  point  again  to  lay  stress  on  the  fact, 
although  it  should  be  self-evident,  that,  in  spite  of  my  low 
estimate  of  the  Jew,  nothing  could  be  further  from  my 
intention  than  to  lend  the  faintest  support  to  any  practical 
or  theoretical  persecution  of  Jews.  I  am  dealing  with 
Judaism,   in  the  platonic   sense,  as  an  idea.     There  is  no 


312  SEX  AND  CHARACTER 

more  an  absolute  Jew  than  an  absolute  Christian.  I  am  not 
speaking  against  the  individual,  whom,  indeed,  if  that  had 
been  so,  I  should  have  wounded  grossly  and  unnecessarily. 
Watchwords,  such  as  "  Buy  only  from  Christians,"  have 
in  reality  a  Jewish  taint ;  they  have  a  meaning  only  for  those 
who  regard  the  race  and  not  the  individual,  and  what  is  to 
be  compared  with  them  is  the  Jewish  use  of  the  word  "  Goy," 
which  is  now  almost  obsolete.  I  have  no  wish  to  boycott 
the  Jew,  or  by  any  such  immoral  means  to  attempt  to  solve 
the  Jewish  question.  Nor  will  Zionism  solve  that  question; 
as  H.  S.  Chamberlain  has  pointed  out,  since  the  destruction 
of  the  Temple  at  Jerusalem,  Judaism  has  ceased  to  be 
national,  and  has  become  a  spreading  parasite,  straggling 
all  over  the  earth  and  finding  true  root  nowhere.  Before 
Zionism  is  possible,  the  Jew  must  first  conquer  Judaism. 

To  defeat  Judaism,  the  Jew  must  first  understand  himself 
and  war  against  himself.  So  far,  the  Jew  has  reached  no 
further  than  to  make  and  enjoy  jokes  against  his  own  pecu- 
liarities. Unconsciously  he  respects  the  Aryan  more  than 
himself.  Only  steady  resolution,  united  to  the  highest  self- 
respect,  can  free  the  Jew  from  Jewishness.  This  resolution, 
be  it  ever  so  strong,  ever  so  honourable,  can  only  be  under- 
stood and  carried  out  by  the  individual,  not  by  the  group. 
Therefore  the  Jewish  question  can  only  be  solved  indi- 
vidually ;  every  single  Jew  must  try  to  solve  it  in  his  proper 
person. 

There  is  no  other  solution  to  the  question  and  can  be  no 
other  ;  Zionism  will  never  succeed  in  answering  it. 

The  Jew,  indeed,  who  has  overcome,  the  Jew  who  has 
become  a  Christian,  has  the  fullest  right  to  be  regarded  by 
the  Aryan  in  his  individual  capacity,  and  no  longer  be  con- 
demned as  belonging  to  a  race  above  which  his  moral 
efforts  have  raised  him.  He  may  rest  assured  that  no 
one  will  dispute  his  well-founded  claim.  The  Aryan  of 
good  social  standing  always  feels  the  need  to  respect  the 
Jew  ;  his  Antisemitism  being  no  joy,  no  amusement  to  him. 
Therefore  he  is  displeased  when  Jews  make  revelations 
about  Jews,  and  he  who  does  so  may  expect  as  few  thanks 


/  JUDAISM  313 

from  that  quarter  as  from  over-sensitive  Judaism  itself. 
Above  all,  the  Aryan  desires  that  the  Jew  should  justify 
Antisemitism  by  being  baptized.  But  the  danger  of  this 
outward  acknowledgment  of  his  inward  struggles  need  not 
trouble  the  Jew  who  wishes  for  liberty  within  him.  He 
will  long  to  reach  the  holy  baptism  of  the  Spirit,  of  which 
that  of  the  body  is  but  the  outward  symbol. 

To  reach  so  important  and  useful  a  result  as  what 
Jewishness  and  Judaism  really  are,  would  be  to  solve 
one  of  the  most  difficult  problems ;  Judaism  is  a  much 
deeper  riddle  than  the  many  Antisemites  believe,  and  in 
very  truth  a  certain  darkness  will  always  enshroud  it.  Even 
the  parallel  with  woman  will  soon  fail  us,  though  now  and 
then  it  may  help  us  further. 

In  Christians  pride  and  humility,  in  Jews  haughtiness 
and  cringing,  are  ever  at  strife  ;  in  the  former  self-con- 
sciousness and  contrition,  in  the  latter  arrogance  and 
bigotry.  In  the  total  lack  of  humility  of  the  Jew  lies  his 
failure  to  grasp  the  idea  of  grace.  From  his  slavish  dis- 
position springs  his  heteronomous  code  of  ethics,  the 
"  Decalogue,"  the  most  immoral  book  of  laws  in  the  uni- 
verse, which  enjoins  on  obedient  followers,  submission  to 
the  powerful  will  of  an  exterior  influence,  with  the  reward 
of  earthly  well-being  and  the  conquest  of  the  world.  His 
relations  with  Jehovah,  the  abstract  Deity,  whom  he  slavishly 
fears,  whose  name  he  never  dares  to  pronounce,  characterise 
the  Jew  ;  he,  like  the  woman,  requires  the  rule  of  an 
exterior  authority.  According  to  the  definition  of  Scho- 
penhauer, the  word  '  God '  indicates  a  man  who  made 
the  world.  This  certainly  is  a  true  likeness  of  the  God  of 
the  Jew.  Of  the  divine  in  man,  of  "  the  God  who  in  my 
bosom  dwells,"  the  true  Jew  knows  nothing  ;  for  what 
Christ  and  Plato,  Eckhard  and  Paul,  Goethe  and  Kant,  the 
priests  of  the  Vedas,  Fechner,  and  every  Aryan  have  meant 
by  divine,  for  what  the  saying,  "  I  am  with  you  always  even 
to  the  end  of  the  world  " — for  the  meaning  of  all  these  the 
Jew  remains  without  understanding.  For  the  God  in  man 
is  the  human  soul,  and  the  absolute  Jew  is  devoid  of  a  soul. 


314  SEX  AND  CHARACTER 

It  is  inevitable,  then,  that  we  should  find  no  trace  of 
belief  in  immortality  in  the  Old  Testament.  Those  who 
have  no  soul  can  have  no  craving  for  immortality,  and  so 
it  is  with  the  woman  and  the  Jew  ;  "  Anima  naturaliter 
Christiana,"  said  Tertullian. 

The  absence  from  the  Jew  of  true  mysticism — Cham- 
berlain has  remarked  on  this — has  a  similar  origin.  They 
have  nothing  but  the  grossest  superstition  and  the  system  of 
divinatory  magic  known  as  the  "  Kabbala."  Jewish  mono- 
theism has  no  relation  to  a  true  belief  in  God  ;  it  is  not 
a  religion  of  reason,  but  a  belief  of  old  women  founded 
on  fear. 

Why  is  it  that  the  Jewish  slave  of  Jehovah  should  become 
so  readily  a  materialist  or  a  freethinker  ?  It  is  merely  the 
alternative  phase  to  slavery  ;  arrogance  about  what  is  not 
understood  is  the  other  side  of  the  slavish  intelligence. 
When  it  is  fully  recognised  that  Judaism  is  to  be  regarded 
rather  as  an  idea  in  which  other  races  have  a  share,  than  as 
the  absolute  property  of  a  particular  race,  then  the  Judaic 
element  in  modern  materialistic  science  will  be  better 
understood.  Wagner  has  given  expression  to  Judaism  in 
music  ;  there  remains  to  say  something  about  Judaism  in 
modern  science. 

Judaism  in  science,  in  the  widest  interpretation  of  it,  is 
the  endeavour  to  remove  all  transcendentalism.  The  Aryan 
feels  that  the  effort  to  grasp  everything,  and  to  refer  every- 
thing to  some  system  of  deductions,  really  robs  things  of 
their  true  meaning  ;  for  him,  what  cannot  be  discovered  is 
what  gives  the  world  its  significance.  The  Jew  has  no  fear 
of  these  hidden  and  secret  elements,  for  he  has  no  con- 
sciousness of  their  presence.  He  tries  to  take  a  view  of  the 
world  as  flat  and  commonplace  as  possible,  and  to  refuse  to 
see  all  the  secret  and  spiritual  meanings  of  things.  His 
view  is  non-philosophical  rather  an  anti-philosophical. 

Because  fear  of  God  in  the  Jew  has  no  relation  with  real 
religion,  the  Jew  is  of  all  persons  the  least  perturbed  by 
mechanical,  materialistic  theories  of  the  world  ;  he  is  readily 
beguiled   by   Darwinism   and   the    ridiculous   notion   that 


JUDAISM  315 

men  are  derived  from  monkeys  ;  and  now  he  is  disposed 
to  accept  the  view  that  the  soul  of  man  is  an  evolution  that 
has  taken  place  within  the  human  race  ;  formerly,  he  was  a 
mad  devotee  of  Büchner,  now  he  is  ready  to  follow  Ostwald. 
It  is  due  to  a  real  disposition  that  the  jews  should  be  so 
prominent  in  the  study  of  chemistry  ;  they  cling  naturally 
to  matter,  and  expect  to  find  the  solution  of  everything  in 
its  properties.  And  yet  one  who  was  the  greatest  German 
investigator  of  all  times,  Kepler  himself,  wrote  the  following 
hexameter  on  chemistry  : 

"  O  curas  Chymicorum  !   O  quantum  in  pulvere  inane  ! " 

The  present  turn  of  medical  science  is  largely  due  to  the 
influence  of  the  Jews,  who  in  such  numbers  have  embraced 
the  medical  profession.  From  the  earliest  times,  until  the 
dominance  of  the  Jews,  medicine  was  closely  allied  with 
religion.  But  now  they  would  make  it  a  matter  of  drugs,  a 
mere  administration  of  chemicals.  But  it  can  never  be  that 
the  organic  will  be  explained  by  the  inorganic.  Fechner  and 
Preyer  were  right  when  they  said  that  death  came  from 
life,  not  life  from  death.  We  see  this  taking  place  daily  in 
individuals  (in  human  beings,  for  instance,  old  age  pre- 
pares for  death  by  a  calcification  of  the  tissues).  And  as 
yet  no  one  has  seen  the  organic  arise  from  the  inorganic. 
From  the  time  of  Schwammerdam  to  that  of  Pasteur  it  has 
become  more  and  more  certain  that  living  things  never 
arise  from  what  is  not  alive.  Surely  this  ontogenetic  obser- 
vation should  be  applied  to  phylogeny,  and  we  should  be 
equally  certain  that,  in  the  past,  the  dead  arose  from  the 
living.  The  chemical  interpretation  of  organisms  sets  these 
on  a  level  with  their  own  dead  ashes.  We  should  return 
from  this  Judaistic  science  to  the  nobler  conceptions  of 
Copernicus  and  Galileo,  Kepler  and  Euler,  Newton  and 
Linnaeus,  Lamarck  and  Faraday,  Sprengel  and  Cuvier.  The 
freethinkers  of  to-day,  soulless  and  not  believing  in  the 
soul,  are  incapable  of  filling  the  places  of  these  great  men 
and  of  reverently  realising  the  presence  of  intrinsic  secrets 
in  nature. 


3i6  SEX  AND  CHARACTER 

It  is  this  want  of  depth  which  explains  the  absence  of 
truly  great  Jews  ;  like  women,  they  are  without  any  trace 
of  genius.  The  philosopher  Spinoza,  about  whose  purely 
Jewish  descent  there  can  be  no  doubt,  is  incomparably  the 
greatest  Jew  of  the  last  nine  hundred  yea'-s,  much  greater 
than  the  poet  Heine  (who,  indeed,  was  almost  destitute  of 
any  quality  of  true  greatness)  or  than  that  original,  if 
shallow  painter,  Israels.  The  extraordinary  fashion  in 
which  Spinoza  has  been  over-estimated  is  less  due  to  his 
intrinsic  merit  than  to  the  fortuitous  circumstance  that  he 
was  the  only  thinker  to  whom  Goethe  gave  his  attention. 

For  Spinoza  himself  there  was  no  deep  problem  in 
nature  (and  in  this  he  showed  his  Jewish  character),  as, 
otherwise,  he  would  not  have  elaborated  his  mathematical 
method,  a  method  according  to  which  the  explanation  of 
things  was  to  be  found  in  themselves.  This  system  formed 
a  refuge  into  which  Spinoza  could  escape  from  himself,  and 
it  is  not  unnatural  that  it  should  have  been  attractive  to 
Goethe,  who  was  the  most  introspective  of  men,  as  it  might 
have  seemed  to  offer  to  him  tranquillity  and  rest. 

Spinoza  showed  his  Jewishness  and  the  limits  that  always 
confine  the  Jewish  spirit  in  a  still  plainer  fashion  ;  I  am  not 
thinking  of  his  failure  to  comprehend  the  State  or  of  his 
adhesion  to  the  Hobbesian  doctrine  of  universal  warfare 
as  the  primitive  condition  of  mankind.  The  matter  goes 
deeper.  I  have  in  mind  his  complete  rejection  of  free-will 
— the  Jew  is  always  a  slave  and  a  determinist — and  his 
view  that  individuals  were  mere  accidents  into  which  the 
universal  substance  had  fallen.  The  Jew  is  never  a  believer  in 
monads.  And  so  there  is  no  wider  philosophical  gulf  than 
that  between  Spinoza  and  his  much  more  eminent  con- 
temporary, Leibnitz,  the  protagonist  of  the  monad  theory, 
or  its  still  greater  creator,  Bruno,  whose  superficial  likeness 
with  Spinoza  has  been  exaggerated  in  the  most  grotesque 
fashion. 

Just  as  Jews  and  women  are  without  extreme  good  and 
extreme  evil,  so  they  never  show  either  genius  or  the  deptti 
of  stupidity  of  which  mankind  is  capable.      The  specitic 


JUDAISM  317 

kind  of  intelligence  for  which  Jews  and  women  alike  are 
notorious  is  due  simply  to  the  alertness  of  an  exaggerated 
egotism  ;  it  is  due,  moreover,  to  the  boundless  capacity 
shown  by  both  for  pursuing  any  object  with  equal  zeal, 
because  they  have  no  intrinsic  standard  of  value — nothing 
in  their  own  souls  by  which  to  judge  of  the  worthiness 
of  any  particular  object.  And  so  they  have  unhampered 
natural  instincts,  such  as  are  not  present  to  help  the  Aryan 
man  when  his  transcendental  standard  fails  him. 

I  may  now  touch  upon  the  likeness  of  the  English  to  the 
Jews,  a  topic  discussed  at  length  by  Wagner.  It  cannot  be 
doubted  that  of  the  Germanic  races  the  English  are  in 
closest  relationship  with  the  Jews.  Their  orthodoxy  and 
their  devotion  to  the  Sabbath  afford  a  direct  indication. 
The  religion  of  the  Englishman  is  always  tinged  with  hypo- 
crisy, and  his  asceticism  is  largely  prudery.  The  English, 
like  women,  have  been  most  unproductive  in  religion  and 
in  music ;  there  may  be  irreligious  poets,  although  not 
great  artists,  but  there  is  no  irreligious  musician.  So,  also, 
the  English  have  produced  no  great  architects  or  philoso- 
phers. Berkeley,  like  Swift  and  Sterne,  were  Irish  ;  Carlyle, 
Hamilton,  and  Burns  were  Scotch.  Shakespeare  and 
Shelley,  the  two  greatest  Englishmen,  stand  far  from  the 
pinnacle  of  humanity  ;  they  do  not  reach  so  far  as  Angelo 
and  Beethoven.  If  we  consider  English  philosophers  we 
shall  see  that  there  has  been  a  great  degeneration  since  the 
Middle  Ages.  It  began  with  William  of  Ockham  and  Duns 
Scotus  ;  it  proceeded  through  Roger  Bacon  and  his  name- 
sake, the  Chancellor  ;  through  Hobbes,  who,  mentally,  was 
so  near  akin  to  Spinoza  ;  through  the  superficial  Locke  to 
Hartley,  Priestley,  Bentham,  the  two  Mills,  Lewes,  Huxley, 
and  Spencer.  These  are  the  greatest  names  in  the  history 
of  English  philosophy,  for  Adam  Smith  and  David  Hume 
were  Scotchmen.  It  must  always  be  remembered  against 
England,  that  from  her  there  came  the  soulless  psychology. 
The  Englishman  has  impressed  himself  on  the  German  as  a 
rigorous  empiricist  and  as  a  practical  politician,  but  these 
two   sides  exhaust  his  importance  in  philosophy.     There 


3i8  SEX  AND  CHARACTER 

has  never  yet  been  a  true  philosopher  who  made  empiricism 
his  basis,  and  no  Englishman  has  got  beyond  empiricism 
without  external  help. 

None  the  less,  the  Englishman  must  not  be  confused  with 
the  Jew.  There  is  more  of  the  transcendental  element  in 
'him,  and  his  mind  is  directed  rather  from  the  transcendental 
to  the  practical,  than  from  the  practical  towards  the  trans- 
cendental. Otherwise  he  would  not  be  so  readily  disposed 
to  humour,  unlike  the  Jew,  who  is  ready  to  be  witty  only  at 
his  own  expense  or  on  sexual  things. 

I  am  well  aware  how  difficult  are  the  problems  of  laughter 
and  humour — just  as  difficult  as  any  problems  that  are 
peculiar  to  man  and  not  shared  by  him  with  the  beasts  ;  so 
difficult  that  neither  Schopenhauer  nor  Jean  Paul  himself 
were  able  to  elucidate  them.  Humour  has  many  aspects  ; 
in  some  men  it  seems  to  be  an  expression  of  pity  for  them- 
selves or  for  others,  but  this  element  is  not  sufficient  to 
distinguish  it. 

The  essence  of  humour  appears  to  me  to  consist  in  a 
laying  of  stress  on  empirical  things,  in  order  that  their 
unreality  may  become  more  obvious.  Everything  that  is 
realised  is  laughable,  and  in  this  way  humour  seems  to  be 
the  antithesis  of  eroticism.  The  latter  welds  men  and  the 
world  together,  and  unites  them  in  a  great  purpose  ;  the 
former  loses  the  bonds  of  synthesis  and  shows  the  world  as 
a  silly  affair.  The  two  stand  somewhat  in  the  relation  of 
polarised  and  unpolarised  light. 

When  the  great  erotic  wishes  to  pass  from  the  limited  to 
the  illimited,  humour  pounces  down  on  him,  pushes  him 
in  front  of  the  stage,  and  laughs  at  him  from  the  wings. 
The  humourist  has  not  the  craving  to  transcend  space  ;  he 
is  content  with  small  things  ;  his  dominion  is  neither  the 
sea  nor  the  mountains,  but  the  fiat  level  plain.  He  shuns 
the  idyllic,  and  plunges  deeply  into  the  commonplace, 
only,  however,  to  show  its  unreality.  He  turns  from  the 
immanence  of  things  and  will  not  hear  the  transcendental 
even  spoken  of.  Wit  seeks  out  contradictions  in  the  sphere  of 
experience  ;  humour  goes  deeper  and  shows  that  experience 


JUDAISM  319 

is  a  blind  and  closed  system  ;  both  compromise  the  pheno- 
menal world  by  showing  that  everything  is  possible  in  it. 
Tragedy,  on  the  other  hand,  shows  what  must  for  all 
eternity  be  impossible  in  the  phenomenal  world  ;  and  thus 
tragedy  and  comedy  alike,  each  in  their  own  way,  are 
negations  of  the  empiric. 

The  Jew  who  does  not  set  out,  like  the  humourist,  from 
the  transcendental,  and  does  not  move  towards  it,  like  the 
erotic,  has  no  interest  in  depreciating  what  is  called  the 
actual  world,  and  that  never  becomes  for  him  the  para- 
phernalia of  a  juggler  or  the  nightmare  of  a  mad-house. 
Humour,  because  it  recognises  the  transcendental,  if  only 
by  the  mode  of  resolutely  concealing  it,  is  essentially 
tolerant ;  satire,  on  the  other  hand,  is  essentially  intolerant, 
and  is  congruous  with  the  disposition  of  the  Jew  and  the 
woman.  Jews  and  women  are  devoid  of  humour,  but 
addicted  to  mockery.  In  Rome  there  was  even  a  woman 
(Sulpicia)  who  wrote  satires.  Satire,  because  of  its  intoler- 
ance, is  impossible  to  men  in  society.  The  humourist,  who 
knows  how  to  keep  the  trifles  and  littlenesses  of  phenomena 
from  troubhng  himself  or  others,  is  a  welcome  guest. 
Humour,  like  love,  moves  away  obstacles  from  our  path  ; 
it  makes  possible  a  way  of  regarchng  the  world.  The  Jew, 
therefore,  is  least  addicted  to  society,  and  the  Englishman 
most  adapted  for  it. 

The  comparison  of  the  Jew  with  the  Englishman  fades 
out  much  more  quickly  than  that  with  the  woman.  Both 
comparisons  first  arose  in  the  heat  of  the  conflict  as  to  the 
worth  and  the  nature  of  Jew^s.  I  may  again  refer  to  Wagner, 
who  not  only  interested  himself  deeply  in  the  problem  of 
Judaism,  but  rediscovered  the  Jew  in  the  Englishman,  and 
threw  the  shadow  of  Ahasuerus  over  his  Kundry,  probably 
the  most  perfect  representation  of  woman  in  art. 

The  fact  that  no  woman  in  the  w^orld  represents  the  idea 
of  the  wife  so  completely  as  the  Jewess  (and  not  only  in  the 
eyes  of  Jews)  still  further  supports  the  comparison  between 
Jews  and  women.  In  the  case  of  the  Aryans,  the  metaphy- 
sical qualities  of  the  male  are  part  of  his  sexual  attraction 


320  SEX  AND  CHARACTER 

for  the  woman,  and  so,  in  a  fashion,  she  puts  on  an  appear- 
ance of  these.  The  Jew,  on  the  other  hand,  has  no  trans- 
cendental quality,  and  in  the  shaping  and  moulding  of  the 
wife  leaves  the  natural  tendencies  of  the  female  nature  a 
more  unhampered  sphere  ;  and  the  Jewish  woman,  accord- 
ingly, plays  the  part  required  of  her,  as  house-mother  or 
odalisque,  as  Cybele  or  Cyprian,  in  the  fullest  way. 

The  congruity  between  Jews  and  women  further  reveals 
itself  in  the  extreme  adaptability  of  the  Jews,  in  their  great 
talent  for  journalism,  the  "mobility"  of  their  minds,  their 
lack  of  deeply-rooted  and  original  ideas,  in  fact  the  mode 
in  which,  like  women,  because  they  are  nothing  in  them- 
selves, they  can  become  everything.  The  Jew  is  an  indivi- 
dual, not  an  individuality  ;  he  is  in  constant  close  relation 
with  the  lower  life,  and  has  no  share  in  the  higher  metaphy- 
sical life. 

At  this  point  the  comparison  between  the  Jew  and  the 
woman  breaks  down  ;  the  being-nothing  and  becoming-all- 
things  differs  in  the  two.  The  woman  is  material  which 
passively  assumes  any  form  impressed  upon  it.  In  the  Jew 
there  is  a  definite  aggressiveness  ;  it  is  not  because  of  the 
great  impression  that  others  make  on  him  that  he  is  recep- 
tive ;  he  is  no  more  subject  to  suggestion  than  the  Aryan 
man,  but  he  adapts  himself  to  every  circumstance  and  every 
race,  becoming,  like  the  parasite,  a  new  creature  in 
every  different  host,  although  remaining  essentially  the 
same.  He  assimilates  himself  to  everything,  and  assi- 
milates everything  ;  he  is  not  dominated  by  others,  but 
submits  himself  to  them.  The  Jew  is  gifted,  the  woman 
is  not  gifted,  and  the  giftedness  of  the  Jew  reveals  itself  in 
many  forms  of  activity,  as,  for  instance,  in  jurisprudence  ; 
but  these  activities  are  always  relative  and  never  seated  in 
the  creative  freedom  of  the  will. 

The  Jew  is  as  persistent  as  the  woman,  but  his  persistence 
is  not  that  of  the  individual  but  of  the  race.  He  is  not 
unconditioned  like  the  Aryan,  but  his  limitations  differ  from 
those  of  the  woman. 

The  true  peculiarity  of  the  Jew  reveals  itself  best  in  his 


JUDAISM  321 

essentially  irreligious  nature.  I  cannot  here  enter  on  a  dis- 
cussion as  to  the  idea  of  religion  ;  but  it  is  enough  to  say 
that  it  is  associated  essentially  with  an  acceptance  of  the 
higher  and  eternal  in  man  as  different  in  kind,  and  in  no 
sense  to  be  derived  from  the  phenomenal  life.  The  Jew  is 
eminently  the  unbeliever.  Faith  is  that  act  of  man  by 
which  he  enters  into  relation  with  being,  and  religious  faith 
is  directed  towards  absolute,  eternal  being,  the  "  life  ever- 
lasting" of  the  religious  phrase.  The  Jew  is  really  nothing, 
because  he  believes  in  nothing. 

Belief  is  everything.  It  does  not  matter  if  a  man  does 
not  believe  in  God  ;  let  him  believe  in  atheism.  But  the 
Jew  believes  nothing;  he  does  not  believe  his  own  belief; 
I  he  doubts  as  to  his  own  doubt.  He  is  never  absorbed  by 
I  his  own  joy,  or  engrossed  by  his  own  sorrow.  He  never 
,  takes  himself  in  earnest,  and  so  never  takes  any  one  else  in 
\  earnest  He  is  content  to  be  a  Jew,  and  accepts  any  disad- 
!  vantages  that  come  from  the  fact. 

We  have  now  reached  the  fundamental  difference  between 
the  Jew  and  the  woman.  Neither  believe  in  themselves ;  but 
the  woman  believes  in  others,  in  her  husband,  her  lover,  or 
her  children,  or  in  love  itself  ;  she  has  a  centre  of  gravity, 
although  it  is  outside  her  own  being.  The  Jew  believes  in 
nothing,  within  him  or  without  him.  His  want  of  desire 
for  permanent  landed  property  and  his  attachment  to 
movable  goods  are  more  than  symbolical. 

The  woman  believes  in  the  man,  in  the  man  outside  her, 
or  in  the  man  from  whom  she  takes  her  inspiration,  and 
in  this  fashion  can  take  herself  in  earnest.  The  Jew  takes 
nothing  seriously;  he  is  frivolous,  and  jests  about  anything, 
about  the  Christian's  Christianity,  the  Jew's  baptism.  He 
is  neither  a  true  realist  nor  a  true  empiricist.  Here  I  must 
state  certain  limitations  to  my  agreement  with  Chamber- 
lain's conclusions.  The  Jew  is  not  really  a  convinced 
empiricist  in  the  fashion  of  the  English  philosophers.  The 
empiricist  believes  in  the  possibility  of  reaching  a  complete 
system  of  knowledge  on  an  empirical  basis  ;  he  hopes  for 
the  perfection  of  science.    The  Jew  does  not  really  believe  in 


32  2  SEX  AND  CHARACTER 

knowledge,  nor  is  he  a  sceptic,  for  he  doubts  his  own  scepti- 
cism. On  the  other  hand,  a  brooding  care  hovers  over  the 
non-metaphysical  system  of  Avenarius,  and  even  in  Ernst 
Mach's  adherence  to  relativity  there  are  signs  of  a  deeply 
reverent  attitude.  The  empiricists  must  not  be  accused  of 
Judaism  because  they  are  shallow. 

The  Jew  is  the  impious  man  in  the  widest  sense.  Piety 
is  not  something  near  things  nor  outside  things  ;  it  is  the 
groundwork  of  everything.  The  Jew  has  been  incorrectly 
called  vulgar,  simply  because  he  does  not  concern  himself 
with  metaphysics.  All  true  culture  that  comes  from  within, 
all  that  a  man  believes  to  be  true  and  that  so  is  true  for 
him,  depend  on  reverence.  Reverence  is  not  limited  to  the 
mystic  or  the  religious  man  ;  all  science  and  all  scepticism, 
everything  that  a  man  truly  believes,  have  reverence  as  the 
fundamental  quality.  Naturally  it  displays  itself  in  dif- 
ferent ways,  in  high  seriousness  and  sanctity,  in  earnestness 
and  enthusiasm.  The  Jew  is  never  either  enthusiastic  or  indif- 
ferent, he  is  neither  ecstatic  nor  cold.  He  reaches  neither  the 
heights  nor  the  depths.  His  restraint  becomes  meagreness, 
his  copiousness  becomes  bombast.  Should  he  venture  into 
the  boundless  realms  of  inspired  thought,  he  seldom 
reaches  beyond  pathos.  And  although  he  cannot  embrace 
the  whole  world,  he  is  for  ever  covetous  of  it. 

Discrimination  and  generalisation,  strength  and  love, 
science  and  poetry,  every  real  and  deep  emotion  of  the 
human  heart,  have  reverence  as  their  essential  basis.  It  is 
not  necessary  that  faith,  as  in  men  of  genius,  should  be  in 
relation  only  to  metaphysical  entity  ;  it  can  extend  also  to 
the  empirical  world  and  appear  fully  there,  and  yet  none 
the  less  be  faith  in  oneself,  in  worth,  in  truth,  in  the  absolute, 
in  God. 

As  the  comprehensive  view  of  religion  and  piety  that  I 
have  given  may  lead  to  misconstruction,  I  propose  to  eluci- 
date it  further.  True  piety  is  not  merely  the  possession  of 
piety,  but  also  the  struggle  to  possess  it ;  it  is  found  equally 
in  the  convinced  believer  in  God  (Handel  or  Fechner),  and 
also  in  the  doubting  seeker  (Lenau  and  Dürer) ;  it  need  not 


JUDAISM  323 

be  made  obvious  to  the  world  (as  in  the  case  of  Bach),  it 
may  display  itself  only  in  a  reverent  attitude  (Mozart).  Nor 
is  piety  necessarily  connected  with  the  appearance  of  a 
Founder  ;  the  ancient  Greeks  were  the  most  reverent  people 
that  have  lived,  and  hence  their  culture  was  highest;  but 
their  religion  had  no  personal  Founder. 

Religion  is  the  creation  of  the  all ;  and  all  that  humanity 
can  be  is  only  through  religion.  So  far  from  the  Jew  being 
religious,  as  has  been  assumed,  he  is  profoundly  irreligious 
!  Were  there  need  to  elaborate  my  verdict  on  the  Jews  I 
j  might  point  out  that  the  Jews,  alone  of  peoples,  do  not  try 
to  make  converts  to  their  faith,  and  that  when  converts  are 
made  they  serve  as  objects  of  puzzled  ridicule  to  them. 
Need  I  refer  to  the  meaningless  formality  and  the  repetitions 
of  Jewish  prayer  ?  Need  I  remind  readers  that  the  Jewish 
religion  is  a  mere  historical  tradition,  a  memorial  of  such 
incidents  as  the  miraculous  crossing  of  the  Red  Sea,  with 
I  the  consequent  thanks  of  cowards  to  their  Saviour  ;  and 
that  it  is  no  guide  to  the  meaning  and  conduct  of  life  ?  The 
Jew  is  truly  irreligious  and  furthest  of  mankind  from  faith. 
There  is  no  relation  between  the  Jew  himself  and  the 
universe  ;  he  has  none  of  the  heroism  of  faith,  just  as  he 
has  none  of  the  disaster  of  absolute  unbelief. 

It  is  not,  then,  mysticism  that  the  Jew  is  without,  as 
Chamberlain  maintains,  but  reverence.  If  he  were  only  an 
honest-minded  materialist  or  a  frank  evolutionist  !  He  is 
not  a  critic,  but  only  critical ;  he  is  not  a  sceptic  in  the 
Cartesian  sense,  not  a  doubter  who  sets  out  from  doubt 
towards  truth,  but  an  ironist  ;  as,  for  instance,  to  take  a 
conspicuous  example,  Heine. 

What,  then,  is  the  Jew  if  he  is  nothing  that  a  man  can 
be  ?  What  goes  on  within  him  if  he  is  utterly  without 
finality,  if  there  is  no  ground  in  him  which  the  plumb  hne 
of  psychology  may  reach  ? 

The  psychological  contents  of  the  Jewish  mind  are  always 
double  or  multiple.  There  are  always  before  him  two 
or  many  possibilities,  where  the  Aryan,  although  he  sees  as 
widelv,  feels  himself  limited  in  his  choice.     I  think  that  the 


324  SEX  AND  CHARACTER 

idea  of  Judaism  consists  in  this  want  of  reality,  this  absence 
of  any  fundamental  relation  to  the  thing-in-and-for-itself.  ^ 
He  stands,  so  to  speak,  outside  reality,  without  ever  entering 
it.  He  can  never  make  himself  one  with  anything — never 
enter  into  real  relationships.  He  is  a  zealot  without  zeal ;  .- 
he  has  no  share  in  the  unlimited,  the  unconditioned.  He  is 
without  simplicity  of  faith,  and  so  is  always  turning  to  each 
new  interpretation,  so  seeming  more  alert  than  the  Aryan. 
Internal  multiplicity  is  the  essence  of  Judaism,  internal 
simplicity  that  of  the  Aryan. 

It  might  be  urged  that  the  Jewish  double-mindedness  is 
modern,  and  is  the  result  of  new  knowledge  struggling  with 
the  old  orthodoxy.  The  education  of  the  Jew,  however, 
only  accentuates  his  natural  qualities,  and  the  doubting 
Jew  turns  with  a  renewed  zeal  to  money-making,  in  which 
only  he  can  find  his  standard  of  value.  A  curious  proof  of 
the  absence  of  simplicity  in  the  mind  of  the  Jew  is  that  he 
seldom  sings,  not  from  bashfulness,  but  because  he  does  not 
believe  in  his  own  singing.  Just  as  the  acuteness  of  Jews 
has  nothing  to  do  with  true  power  of  differentiating,  so  his 
shyness  about  singing  or  even  about  speaking  in  clear 
positive  tones  has  nothing  to  do  with  real  reserve.  It  is 
a  kind  of  inverted  pride  ;  having  no  true  sense  of  his  own 
worth,  he  fears  being  made  ridiculous  by  his  singing  or 
speech.  The  embarrassment  of  the  Jew  extends  to  things 
which  have  nothing  to  with  the  real  ego. 

It  has  been  seen  how  difficult  it  is  to  define  the  Jew.  He 
has  neither  severity  nor  tenderness.  He  is  both  tenacious 
and  weak.  He  is  neither  king  nor  leader,  slave  nor  vassal. 
He  has  no  share  in  enthusiasm,  and  yet  he  has  little 
equanimity.  Nothing  is  self-evident  to  him,  and  yet  he  is 
astonished  at  nothing.  He  has  no  trace  of  Lohengrin  in 
him,  and  none  of  Telramund.  He  is  ridiculous  as  a 
member  of  a  students'  corps  and  he  is  equally  ridiculous 
as  a  "philister."  Because  he  believes  in  nothing,  he  takes 
refuge  in  materialism  ;  from  this  arises  his  avarice,  which  is 
simply  an  attempt  to  convince  himself  that  something  has 
a  permanent  value.    And  yet  he  is  no  real  tradesman  ;  what 


JUDAISM  325 

is  unreal,  insecure  in  German  commerce,  is  the  result  of  the 
Jewish  speculative  interest. 

The  erotics  of  the  Jew  are  sentimentalisni,  and  their 
humour  is  satire.  Perhaps  examples  may  help  to  explain 
my  interpretation  of  the  Jewish  character,  and  I  point 
readily  to  Ibsen's  King  Hakon  in  the  "  Pretenders,"  and  to 
his  Dr.  Stockmann  in  '*  The  Enemy  of  the  People."  These 
may  make  clear  what  is  for  ever  absent  in  the  Jew.  Judaism 
and  Christianity  form  the  greatest  possible  contrasts ;  the 
former  is  bereft  of  all  true  faith  and  of  inner  identity,  the 
latter  is  the  highest  expression  of  the  highest  faith.  Chris- 
tianity is  heroism  at  its  highest  point ;  Judaism  is  the  extreme 
of  cowardliness. 

Chamberlain  has  said  much  that  is  true  and  striking  as  to 
the  fearful  awe-struck  want  of  understanding  that  the  Jew 
displays  with  regard  to  the  person  and  teaching  of  Christ, 
for  the  combination  of  warrior  and  sufferer  in  Him,  for  His 
life  and  death.  None  the  less,  it  would  be  wrong  to  state 
that  the  Jew  is  an  enemy  of  Christ,  that  he  represents  the 
anti-Christ  ;  it  is  only  that  he  feels  no  relation  with  Him. 
It  is  strong-minded  Aryans,  malefactors,  who  hate  Jesus. 
The  Jew  does  not  get  beyond  being  bewildered  and 
disturbed  by  Him,  as  something  that  passes  his  wit  to 
understand. 

And  yet  it  has  stood  the  Jew  in  good  stead  that  the  New 
Testament  seemed  the  outcome  and  fine  flower  of  the  Old, 
the  fulfilment  of  its  Messianic  prophecies.  The  polar  oppo- 
sition between  Judaism  and  Christianity  makes  the  origin  of 
the  latter  from  the  former  a  deep  riddle  ;  it  is  the  riddle  of 
the  psychology  of  the  founder  of  religions. 

What  is  the  difference  between  the  genius  who  founds  a 
religion  and  other  kinds  of  genius  ?  What  is  it  that  has  led 
him  to  found  the  religion  ? 

The  main  difference  is  no  other  than  that  he  did  not 
always  believe  in  the  God  he  worships.  Tradition  relates 
of  Buddha,  as  of  Christ,  that  they  were  subject  to  greater 
temptations  than  other  men.  Two  others,  Mahomet  and 
Luther,   were   epileptic.      Epilepsy    is   the   disease   of   the 


326  SEX  AND  CHARACTER 

criminal ;  Caesar,  Narses,  Napoleon,  the  greatest  of  the 
criminals,  were  epileptics. 

The  founder  of  a  religion  is  the  man  who  has  lived 
without  God  and  yet  has  struggled  towards  the  greatest 
faith.  How  is  it  possible  for  a  bad  man  to  transform  him- 
self ?  As  Kant,  although  he  was  compelled  to  admit  the  fact, 
asked  in  his  "  Philosophy  of  Religion,"  how  can  an  evil  tree 
bring  forth  good  fruit  ?  The  inconceivable  mystery  of  the 
transformation  into  a  good  man  of  one  who  has  lived  evilly 
all  the  days  and  years  of  his  life  has  actually  realised  itself 
in  the  case  of  some  six  or  seven  historical  personages. 
These  have  been  the  founders  of  religions. 

Other  men  of  genius  are  good  from  their  birth ;  the 
religious  founder  acquires  goodness.  The  old  existence 
ceases  utterly  and  is  replaced  by  the  new.  The  greater  the 
man,  the  more  must  perish  in  him  at  the  regeneration.  I 
am  inclined  to  think  that  Socrates,  alone  amongst  the 
Greeks,  approached  closely  to  the  founders  of  religion ; 
perhaps  he  made  the  decisive  struggle  with  evil  in  the  four- 
and-twenty  hours  during  which  he  stood  alone  at  Potidaea. 

The  founder  of  a  religion  is  the  man  for  whom  no  problem 
has  been  solved  from  his  birth.  He  is  the  man  with  the 
least  possible  sureness  of  conviction,  for  whom  everything 
is  doubtful  and  uncertain,  and  who  has  to  conquer  every- 
thing for  himself  in  this  life.  One  has  to  struggle  against 
illness  and  physical  weakness,  another  trembles  on  the 
brink  of  the  crimes  which  are  possible  for  him,  yet  another 
has  been  in  the  bonds  of  sin  from  his  birth.  It  is  only  a 
formal  statement  to  say  that  original  sin  is  the  same  in  all 
persons  ;  it  differs  materially  for  each  person.  Here  one, 
there  another,  each  as  he  was  born,  has  chosen  what  is 
senseless  and  worthless,  has  preferred  instinct  to  his  will,  or 
pleasure  to  love  ;  only  the  founder  of  a  religion  has  had 
original  sin  in  its  absolute  form ;  in  him  everything  is 
doubtful,  everything  is  in  question.  He  has  to  meet  every 
problem  and  free  himself  from  all  guilt.  He  has  to  reach 
firm  ground  from  the  deepest  abyss  ;  he  has  to  surmount 
the   nothingness   in  him  and  bind  himself  to  the  utmost 


JUDAISM  327 

reality.  And  so  it  may  be  said  of  him  that  he  frees  himself 
of  original  sin,  that  in  him  God  becomes  man,  but  also 
that  the  man  becomes  God  ;  in  him  was  all  error  and 
all  guilt  ;  in  him  there  comes  to  be  all  expiation  and 
redemption. 

Thus  the  founder  of  a  religion  is  the  greatest  of  the 
geniuses,  for  he  has  vanquished  the  most.  He  is  the  man 
who  has  accomplished  victoriously  what  the  deepest 
thinkers  of  mankind  have  thought  of  only  timorously  as 
a  possibility,  the  complete  regeneration  of  a  man,  the 
reversal  of  his  will.  Other  great  men  of  genius  have, 
indeed,  to  fight  against  evil,  but  the  bent  of  their  souls  is 
towards  the  good.  The  founder  of  a  religion  has  so  much 
in  him  of  evil,  of  the  perverse,  of  earthly  passion,  that  he 
must  fight  with  the  enemy  withm  him  for  forty  days  in  the 
wilderness,  without  food  or  sleep.  It  was  only  thus  that  he 
can  conquer  and  overcome  the  death  within  him  and  free 
himself  for  the  highest  life.  Were  it  otherwise  there  would 
be  no  impulse  to  found  a  faith.  The  founder  of  a  religion 
is  thus  the  very  antipodes  of  the  emperor ;  emperor  and 
Galilean  are  at  the  two  poles  of  thought.  In  Napoleon's 
life,  also,  there  was  a  moment  when  a  conversion  took 
place;  but  this  was  not  a  turning  away  from  earthly  life,  but 
the  deliberate  decision  tor  the  treasure  and  power  and 
splendour  of  the  earthly  life.  Napoleon  was  great  in  the 
colossal  intensity  with  which  he  flung  from  him  all  the 
ideal,  all  relation  to  the  absolute,  in  the  magnitude  of  his 
guilt.  The  founder  of  religion,  on  the  other  hand,  cannot 
and  will  not  bring  to  man  anything  except  that  which  was 
most  difficult  for  himself  to  attain,  the  reconciliation  with 
God.  He  knows  that  he  himself  was  the  man  most  laden 
with  guilt,  and  he  atones  for  the  guilt  by  his  death  on  the 

cross. 

There  were  two  possibilities  in  Judaism.  Before  the 
birth  of  Christ,  these  two,  negation  and  affirmation,  were 
together  awaiting  choice.  Christ  was  the  man  who  con- 
quered in  Himself  Judaism,  the  greatest  negation,  and 
created  Christianity,  the  strongest  affirmation  and  the  most 


328  SEX  AND  CHARACTER 

direct  opposite  of  Judaism.  Now  the  choice  has  been 
made  ;  the  old  Israel  has  divided  into  Jews  and  Christians, 
and  Judaism  has  lost  the  possibility  of  producing  greatness. 
The  new  Judaism  has  been  unable  to  produce  men  like 
Samson  and  Joshua,  the  least  Jewish  of  the  old  Jews.  In 
the  history  of  the  world,  Christendom  and  Jewry  represent 
negation  and  affirmation.  In  old  Israel  there  was  the 
highest  possibility  of  mankind,  the  possibility  of  Christ. 
The  other  possibility  is  the  Jew. 

I  must  guard  against  misconception  ;  I  do  not  mean  that 
there  was  any  approach  to  Christianity  in  Judaism;  the  one 
is  the  absolute  negation  of  the  other ;  the  relation  between 
the  two  is  only  that  which  exists  between  all  pairs  of  direct 
opposites.  Even  more  than  in  the  case  of  piety  and  Judaism, 
Judaism  and  Christianity  can  best  be  contrasted  by  what 
each  respectively  excludes.  Nothing  is  easier  than  to  be 
Jewish,  nothing  so  difficult  as  to  be  Christian.  Judaism  is 
the  abyss  over  which  Christianity  is  erected,  and  for  that 
reason  the  Aryan  dreads  nothing  so  deeply  as  the  Jew. 

I  am  not  disposed  to  believe,  with  Chamberlain,  that  the 
birth  of  the  Saviour  in  Palestine  was  an  accident.  Christ 
was  a  Jew,  precisely  that  He  might  overcome  the  Judaism 
within  Him,  for  he  who  triumphs  over  the  deepest  doubt 
reaches  the  highest  faith  ;  he  who  has  raised  himself  above 
the  most  desolate  negation  is  most  sure  in  his  position  of 
affirmation.  Judaism  was  the  peculiar,  original  sin  of 
Christ ;  it  was  His  victory  over  Judaism  that  made  Him 
greater  than  Buddha  or  Confucius.  Christ  was  the  greatest 
man  because  He  conquered  the  greatest  enemy.  Perhaps 
He  was,  and  will  remain,  the  only  Jew  to  conquer  Judaism. 
The  first  of  the  Jews  to  become  wholly  the  Christ  was  also 
the  last  who  made  the  transition.  It  may  be,  however,  that 
there  still  lies  in  Judaism  the  possibility  of  producing 
a  Christ,  and  that  the  founder  of  the  next  religion  will  pass 
through  Jewry. 

On  no  other  supposition  can  we  account  for  the  long 
persistence  of  the  Jewish  race  which  has  outlived  so  many 
other  peoples.     Without  at  least  some  vague  hope,  the  Jews 


JUDAISM  329 

could  not  have  survived,  and  the  hope  is  that  there  must  be 
something  in  Judaism  for  Judaism  ;  it  is  the  idea  of  a  Mes- 
siah, of  one  who  shall  save  them  from  Judaism.  Every 
other  race  has  had  some  special  watchword,  and,  on  realis- 
ing their  watchword,  they  have  perished.  The  Jews  have 
failed  to  realise  their  watchword,  and  so  their  vitality  per- 
sists. The  Jewish  nature  has  no  other  metaphysical  mean- 
ing than  to  be  the  spring  from  which  the  founders  of 
rehgion  will  come.  Their  tradition  to  increase  and  multiply 
is  connected  with  this  vague  hope,  that  out  of  them  shall 
come  the  Messiah,  The  possibility  of  begetting  Christs  is 
the  meaning  of  Judaism.  % 

As  in  the  Jew  there  are  the  greatest  possibilities,  so  also 
in  him  are  the  meanest  actualities  ;  he  is  adapted  to  most 
things  and  realises  fewest. 

Judaism,  at  the  present  day,  has  reached  its  highest  point 
since  the  time  of  Herod.  Judaism  is  the  spirit  of  modern 
life.  Sexuality  is  accepted,  and  contemporary  ethics  sing 
the  praises  of  pairing.  Unhappy  Nietzsche  must  not  be 
made  responsible  for  the  shameful  doctrines  of  Wilhelm 
Bölsche.  Nietzsche  himself  understood  asceticism,  and 
perhaps  it  was  only  as  a  revulsion  from  the  evils  of  his  own 
asceticism  that  he  attached  value  to  the  opposite  concep- 
tion. It  is  the  Jew  and  the  woman  who  are  the  apostles  of 
pairing  to  bring  guilt  on  humanity. 

Our  age  is  not  only  the  most  Jewish  but  the  most  feminine. 
It  is  a  time  when  art  is  content  with  daubs  and  seeks  its 
inspiration  in  the  sports  of  animals ;  the  time  of  a  superficial 
anarchy,  with  no  feeling  for  Justice  and  the  State ;  a  time 
of  communistic  ethics,  of  the  most  foolish  of  historical 
views,  the  materialistic  interpretation  of  history ;  a  time  of 
capitalism  and  of  Marxism  ;  a  time  when  history,  life,  and 
science  are  no  more  than  political  economy  and  technical 
instruction  ;  a  time  when  genius  is  supposed  to  be  a  form 
of  madness ;  a  time  with  no  great  artists  and  no  great 
philosophers  ;  a  time  without  originality  and  yet  with  the 
most  foolish  craving  for  originality;  a  time  when  the  cult 
of    the   Virgin   has   been    replaced   by  that    of   the  Demi- 


330  SEX  AND  CHARACTER 

vierge.     It   is   the   time  when   pairing  has  not  only  been 
approved  but  has  been  enjoined  as  a  duty. 

But  from  the  new  Judaism  the  new  Christianity  may  be 
pressing  forth ;  mankind  waits  for  the  new  founder  of  reli- 
gion, and,  as  in  the  year  one,  the  age  presses  for  a  decision. 
The  decision  must  be  made  between  Judaism  and  Chris- 
tianity, between  business  and  culture,  between  male  and 
female,  between  the  race  and  the  individual,  between  un- 
worthiness  and  worth,  between  the  earthly  and  the  higher 
life,  between  negation  and  the  God-like.  Mankind  has  the 
choice  to  make.  There  are  only  two  poles,  and  there  is  no 
middle  way. 


CHAPTER  XIV 

WOMAN  AND  MANKIND 

At  last  we  are  ready,  clear-eyed  and  well  armed,  to  deal 
with  the  question  of  the  emancipation  of  women.  Our 
eyes  are  clear,  for  we  have  freed  them  from  the  thronging 
specks  of  dubiety  that  had  hitherto  obscured  the  question, 
and  we  are  armed  with  a  well-founded  grasp  of  theory,  and 
a  secure  ethical  basis.  We  are  far  from  the  maze  in  which 
this  controversy  usually  lies,  and  our  investigation  has  got 
beyond  the  mere  statement  of  different  natural  capacity 
for  men  and  women,  to  a  point  whence  the  part  of  women 
in  the  world-whole  and  the  meaning  of  her  relation  to 
humanity  can  be  estimated.  I  am  not  going  to  deal  with 
any  practical  applications  of  my  results  ;  the  latter  are  not 
nearly  optimistic  enough  for  me  to  hope  that  they  could 
have  any  effect  on  the  progress  of  political  movements.  I 
refrain  from  working  out  laws  of  social  hygiene,  and  content 
myself  with  facing  the  problem  from  the  standpoint  of  that 
conception  of  humanity  which  pervades  the  philosophy  of 
Immanuel  Kant. 

This  conception  is  in  great  danger  from  woman.  Woman 
is  able,  in  a  quite  extraordinary  way,  to  produce  the  im- 
pression that  she  herself  is  really  non-sexual,  and  that  her 
sexuality  is  only  a  concession  to  man.  But  be  that  as  it 
may,  at  the  present  time  men  have  almost  allowed  them- 
selves to  be  persuaded  by  woman  that  their  strongest  and 
most  markedly  characteristic  desire  lies  in  sexuality,  that  it 
is  only  through  woman  that  they  can  hope  to  satisfy  their 
truest  and  best  ambitions,  and  that  chastity  is  an  un- 
natural and   impossible    state    for  them.     How    often    it 


332  SEX  AND  CHARACTER 

happens  that  young  men  who  are  wrapped  up  in  their  work 
are  told  by  women  to  whom  they  appeal  and  who  would 
prefer  to  have  them  paying  them  attention,  or  even  as  sons- 
in-law,  that  "  they  ought  not  to  work  too  hard,"  that  they 
ought  to  "  enjoy  life."  At  the  bottom  of  this  sort  of  advice 
there  lies  a  feeling  on  the  woman's  part,  which  is  none 
the  less  real  because  it  is  unconscious,  that  her  whole 
significance  and  existence  depend  on  her  mission  as  a 
procreating  agent,  and  that  she  goes  to  the  wall  if  man  is 
allowed  to  occupy  himself  altogether  with  other  than  sexual 
matters. 

That  women  will  ever  change  in  this  respect  is  doubtful. 
There  is  nothing  to  show  that  she  ever  was  different.  It 
may  be  that  to-day  the  physical  side  of  the  question  is  more 
to  the  fore  than  formerly,  since  a  great  deal  of  the  "  woman 
movement"  of  the  times  is  merely  a  desire  to  be  "free,"  to 
shake  off  the  trammels  of  motherhood ;  as  a  whole  the 
practical  results  show  that  it  is  revolt  from  motherhood 
towards  prostitution,  a  prostitute  emancipation  rather  than 
the  emancipation  of  woman  that  is  aimed  at  :  a  bold  bid  for 
the  success  of  the  courtesan.  The  only  real  change  is  man's 
behaviour  towards  the  movement.  Under  the  influence  of 
modern  Judaism,  men  seem  inclined  to  accept  woman's 
estimate  of  them  and  to  bow  before  it. 

Masculine  chastity  is  laughed  at,  and  the  feeling  that 
woman  is  the  evil  influence  in  man's  life  is  no  longer  under- 
stood, and  men  are  not  ashamed  of  their  own  lust. 

It  is  now  apparent  from  where  this  demand  for  "  seeing 
life,"  the  Dionysian  view  of  the  music-hall,  the  cult  of 
Goethe  in  so  far  as  he  follows  Ovid,  and  this  quite  modern 
"coitus-cult"  comes.  There  is  no  doubt  that  the  move- 
ment is  so  widespread  that  very  few  men  have  the  courage 
to  acknowledge  their  chastity,  preferring  to  pretend  that 
they  are  regular  Don  Juans.  Sexual  excess  is  held  to  be 
the  most  desirable  characteristic  of  a  man  of  the  world,  and 
sexuality  has  attained  such  pre-eminence  that  a  man  is 
doubted  unless  he  can,  as  it  were,  show  proofs  of  his 
prowess.     Chastity,  on  the  other  hand,  is  so  despised  that 


WOMAN  AND  MANKIND  333 

many  a  really  pure  lad  attempts  to  appear  a  blase  roue.  It 
is  even  true  that  those  who  are  modest  are  ashamed  of  the 
feeling  ;  but  there  is  another,  the  modern  form  of  shame — 
not  the  eroticist's  shame,  but  the  shame  of  the  woman  who 
has  no  lover,  who  has  not  received  appraisement  from  the 
opposite  sex.  Hence  it  comes  that  men  make  it  their 
business  to  tell  each  other  what  a  rignt  and  proper  pleasure 
they  take  in  "  doing  their  duty  "  by  the  opposite  sex.  And 
women  are  careful  to  let  it  be  known  that  only  what  is 
"  manly  "  in  man  can  appeal  to  them  :  and  man  takes  their 
measure  of  his  manliness  and  makes  it  his  own.  Man's 
qualifications  as  a  male  have,  in  fact,  become  identical  with 
his  value  with  women,  in  women's  eyes. 

But  God  forbid  that  it  should  be  so  ;  that  w  ould  mean 
that  there  are  no  longer  any  men. 

Contrast  with  this  the  fact  that  the  high  value  set  on 
women's  virtue  originated  with  man,  and  w^ill  always 
come  from  men  worthy  of  the  name  ;  it  is  the  projection 
of  man's  own  ideal  of  spotless  purity  on  the  object  of  his 
love. 

But  there  should  be  no  mistaking  this  true  chastity  for 
the  shivering  and  shaking  before  contact,  which  is  soon 
changed  for  delighted  acquiescence,  nor  for  the  hysterical 
suppression  of  sexual  desires.  The  outward  endeavour  to 
correspond  to  man's  demand  for  physical  purity  must  not 
be  taken  for  anything  but  a  fear  lest  the  buyer  will  fight 
shy  of  the  bargain  ;  least  of  all  the  care  which  women  so 
often  take  to  choose  only  the  man  who  can  give  them  most 
value  must  not  deceive  any  one  (it  has  been  called  the 
"high  value"  or  '*  self-respect"  a  girl  has  for  herself) !  If 
one  remembers  the  view  women  take  of  virginity,  there 
can  be  very  little  doubt  that  woman's  one  end  is  the 
bringing  about  of  universal  pairing  as  the  only  means  by 
which  they  acquire  a  real  existence  ;  that  women  desire 
pairing,  and  nothing  else,  even  if  they  personally  appear  to 
be  as  uninterested  as  possible  in  sensual  matters.  All  this 
can  be  fully  proved  from  the  generality  of  the  match- 
making instinct. 


334  SEX  AND  CHARACTER 

In  order  to  be  fully  persuaded  of  this,  woman's  attitude 
towards  the  virginity  of  those  of  her  own  sex  must  be 
considered. 

It  is  certain  that  women  have  a  very  low  opinion  of  the 
unmarried.  It  is,  in  fact,  the  one  female  condition  which 
has  a  negative  value  for  woman.  Women  only  respect  a 
woman  when  she  is  married ;  even  if  she  is  unhappily 
married  to  a  hideous,  weak,  poor,  common,  tyrannical, 
"  impossible "  man,  she  is,  nevertheless,  married,  has 
received  value,  existence.  Even  if  a  woman  has  had  a 
short  experience  of  the  freedom  of  a  courtesan's  life,  even 
if  she  has  been  on  the  streets,  she  still  stands  higher  in  a 
woman's  estimation  than  the  old  maid,  who  works  and 
toils  alone  in  her  room,  without  ever  having  known  lawful 
or  unlawful  union  with  a  man,  the  enduring  or  fleeting 
ecstasy  of  love. 

Even  a  young  and  beautiful  girl  is  never  valued  by  a 
woman  for  her  attractions  as  such  (the  sense  of  the  beauti- 
ful is  wanting  in  woman  since  they  have  no  standard  in 
themselves  to  measure  it  by),  but  merely  because  she  has 
more  prospect  of  enslaving  a  man.  The  more  beautiful  a 
young  girl  is,  the  more  promising  she  appears  to  other 
women,  the  greater  her  value  to  woman  as  the  match- 
maker in  her  mission  as  guardian  of  the  race  ;  it  is  only 
this  unconscious  feeling  which  makes  it  possible  for  a 
woman  to  take  pleasure  in  the  beauty  of  a  young  girl. 
It  goes  without  saying  that  this  can  only  happen  when 
the  woman  in  question  has  already  achieved  her  own 
end  (because,  otherwise,  envy  of  a  contemporary,  and  the 
fear  of  having  her  own  chances  jeopardised  by  others, 
would  overcome  other  considerations).  She  must  first 
of  all  attain  her  own  union,  and  then  she  is  ready  to  help 
others. 

Women  are  altogether  to  blame  for  the  unpleasant  asso- 
ciations which  are  so  unfortunately  connected  with  "old 
maids."  One  often  hears  men  talking  respectfully  of  an 
elderly  woman  ;  but  every  woman  and  girl,  whether  married 
or  single,  has  nothing  but  contempt  for  such  a  one,  even 


WOMAN  AND  MANKIND  335 

when,  as  is  often  the  case,  they  are  unconscious  that  it  is  so 
with  them.  I  once  heard  a  married  woman,  whose  talents 
and  beauty  put  jealousy  quite  out  of  the  question,  making 
fun  of  her  plain  and  elderly  Italian  governess  for  repeatedly 
saying  that  :  "  lo  sono  ancora  una  virgine  "  (that  she  was 
still  a  virgin).  The  interpretation  put  on  the  words  was 
that  the  speaker  wished  to  admit  she  had  made  a  virtue  of 
necessity,  and  would  have  been  very  glad  to  get  rid  of  her 
virginity  if  she  could  have  done  so  without  detriment  to  her 
position  in  life. 

This  is  the  most  important  point  of  all  :  women  not 
only  disparage  and  despise  the  virginity  of  other  women, 
but  they  set  no  value  on  their  own  state  of  virginity  (except 
that  men  prize  it  so  highly).  This  is  why  they  look  upon 
every  married  woman  as  a  sort  of  superior  being.  The 
deep  impression  made  on  women  by  the  sexual  act  can  be 
most  plainly  seen  by  the  respect  which  girls  pay  to  a  married 
woman,  of  however  short  a  standing  ;  which  points  to  their 
idea  of  their  existence  being  the  attainment  of  the  same 
zenith  themselves.  They  look  upon  other  young  girls,  on 
the  contrary,  as  being,  like  themseves,  still  imperfect  beings 
awaiting  consummation. 

I  think  I  have  said  enough  to  show  that  experience  con- 
firms the  deduction  I  made  from  the  importance  of  the 
pairing  instinct  in  women,  the  deduction  that  virgin  worship 
is  of  male,  not  female  origin. 

A  man  demands  chastity  in  himself  and  others,  most  of 
all  from  the  being  he  loves  ;  a  woman  wants  the  man  with 
most  experience  and  sensuality,  not  virtue.  Woman  has 
no  comprehension  of  paragons.  On  the  contrary,  it 
is  well  known  that  a  woman  is  most  ready  to  fly  to  the 
arms  of  the  man  with  the  widest  reputation  for  bemg  a 
Don  Juan. 

Wom^an  requires  man  to  be  sexual,  because  she  only 
gains  existence  through  his  sexuality.  Women  have  no 
sense  of  a  man's  love,  as  a  superior  phenomenon,  they  only 
perceive  that  side  of  him  which  unceasingly  desires  and 
appropriates  the  object  of  his  affections,  and  men  who  have 


336  SEX  AND  CHARACTER 

none  or  very  little  of  the  instinct  of  brutality  developed  in 
them  have  no  influence  on  them. 

As  for  the  higher,  platonic  love  of  man,  they  do  not 
want  it ;  it  flatters  and  pleases  them,  but  it  has  no  signi- 
ficance for  them,  and  if  the  homage  on  bended  knees 
lasts  too  long,  Beatrice  becomes  just  as  impatient  as  Mes- 
salina. 

In  coitus  lies  woman's  greatest  humiliation,  in  love  her 
supremest  exaltation.  Since  woman  desires  coitus  and  not 
love,  she  proves  that  she  wishes  to  be  humiliated  and  not 
worshipped.  The  ultimate  opponent  of  the  emancipation 
of  women  is  woman. 

It  is  not  because  sexual  union  is  voluptuous,  not  because 
it  is  the  typical  example  of  all  the  pleasures  of  the  lower 
life,  that  it  is  immoral.  Asceticism,  which  would  regard 
pleasure  in  itself  as  immoral,  is  itself  immoral,  inasmuch 
it  attributes  immorality  to  an  action  because  of  the  external 
consequences  of  it,  not  because  of  immorality  in  the  thing 
itself ;  it  is  the  imposition  of  an  alien,  not  an  inherent  law. 
A  man  may  seek  pleasure,  he  may  strive  to  make  his  life 
easier  and  more  pleasant ;  but  he  must  not  sacrifice  a  moral 
law.  Asceticism  attempts  to  make  man  moral  by  self- 
repression  and  will  give  him  credit  and  praise  for  morality 
simply  because  he  has  denied  himself  certain  things. 
Asceticism  must  be  rejected  from  the  point  of  view  of 
ethics  and  of  psychology  inasmuch  as  it  makes  virtue  the 
efifect  of  a  cause,  and  not  the  thing  itself.  Asceticism  is  a 
dangerous  although  attractive  guide  ;  since  pleasure  is  one 
of  the  chief  things  that  beguile  men  from  the  higher  path, 
it  is  easy  to  suppose  that  its  mere  abandonment  is 
meritorious. 

In  itself,  however,  pleasure  is  neither  moral  nor  immoral. 
It  is  only  when  the  desire  for  pleasure  conquers  the  desire 
for  worthiness  that  a  human  being  has  fallen. 

Coitus  is  immoral  because  there  is  no  man  who  does  not 
use  woman  at  such  times  as  a  means  to  an  end  ;  for  whom 
pleasure  does  not,  in  his  own  as  well  as  her  being,  during 
that  time  represent  the  value  of  mankind. 


WOMAN  AND  MANKIND  337 

During  coitus  a  man  forgets  all  about  everything,  he 
forgets  the  woman  ;  she  has  no  longer  a  psychic  but  only 
a  physical  existence  for  him.  He  either  desires  a  child  by 
her  or  the  satisfaction  of  his  own  passion  ;  in  neither  case 
does  he  use  her  as  an  end  in  herself,  but  for  an  outside  cause. 
This  and  this  alone  makes  coitus  immoral. 

There  is  no  doubt  that  woman  is  the  missionary  of  sexual 
union,  and  that  she  looks  upon  herself,  as  on  everything  else, 
merely  as  a  means  to  its  ends.  She  wants  a  man  to  satisfy 
her  passion  or  to  obtain  children  ;  she  is  willing  to  be  used 
by  man  as  a  tool,  as  a  thing,  as  an  object,  to  be  treated  as 
his  property,  to  be  changed  and  modelled  according  to  his 
good  pleasure.  But  we  should  not  allow  ourselves  to  be 
used  by  others  as  means  to  an  end. 

Kundry  appealed  often  to  Parsifal's  compassion  for  her 
yearnings  :  but  here  we  see  the  weakness  of  sympathetic 
morality,  which  attempts  to  grant  every  desire  of  those 
around,  however  wrong  such  wishes  may  be.  Ethics 
and  morality  based  on  sympathy  are  equally  absurd,  since 
they  make  the  "  ought  "  dependent  on  the  "  will,"  (whether 
it  be  the  will  of  oneself,  or  of  others,  or  of  society,  it  is  all 
the  same,)  instead  of  making  the  "will"  dependent  on  the 
"  ought " ;  they  take  as  a  standard  of  morality  concrete 
cases  of  human  history,  concrete  cases  of  human  happiness, 
concrete  moments  in  life  instead  of  the  idea. 

But  the  question  is  :  how  ought  man  to  treat  woman  ? 
As  she  herself  desires  to  be  treated  or  as  the  moral  idea 
would  dictate  ? 

If  he  is  going  to  treat  her  as  she  wishes,  he  must  have 
intercourse  with  her,  for  she  desires  it ;  he  must  beat  her, 
for  she  likes  to  be  hurt  ;  he  must  hypnotise  her,  since  she 
wishes  to  be  hypnotised  ;  he  must  prove  to  her  by 
his  attentions  how  little  he  thinks  of  himself,  for  she 
likes  compliments,  and  has  no  desire  to  be  respected  for 
herself. 

If  he  is  going  to  treat  her  as  the  moral  idea  demands, 
he  must  try  to  see  in  her  the  concept  of  mankind 
and    endeavour   to   respect  her.      Even   although  woman 

Y 


338  SEX  AND  CHARACTER 

is  only  a  function  of  man,  a  function  he  can  degrade 
or  raise  at  will,  and  women  do  not  wish  to  be  more 
or  anything  else  than  what  man  makes  them,  it  is  no 
more  a  moral  arrangement  than  the  suttee  of  Indian 
widows,  which,  even  though  it  be  voluntary  and  insisted 
upon  by  them,  is  none  the  less  terrible  barbarity. 

The  emancipation  of  woman  is  analogous  to  the  eman- 
cipation of  Jews  and  negroes.  Undoubtedly  the  principal 
reason  why  these  people  have  been  treated  as  slaves  and 
inferiors  is  to  be  found  in  their  servile  dispositions  ;  their 
desire  for  freedom  is  not  nearly  so  strong  as  that  of  the 
Indo-Germans.  And  even  although  tHe  whites  in  America 
at  the  present  day  find  it  necessary  to  keep  themselves  quite 
aloof  from  the  negro  population  because  they  make  such  a 
bad  use  of  their  freedom,  yet  in  the  war  of  the  Northern 
States  against  the  Federals,  which  resulted  in  the  freedom 
of  the  slaves,  right  was  entirely  on  the  side  of  the  emanci- 
pators. 

Although  the  humanity  of  Jews,  negroes,  and  still  more  of 
women,  is  weighed  down  by  many  immoral  impulses ; 
although  in  these  cases  there  is  so  much  more  to  fight 
against  than  in  the  case  of  Aryan  men,  still  we  must  try  to 
respect  mankind,  and  to  venerate  the  idea  of  humanity  (by 
which  I  do  not  mean  the  human  community,  but  the  being, 
man,  the  soul  as  part  of  the  spiritual  world).  No  matter 
how  degraded  a  criminal  may  be,  no  one  ought  to  arrogate 
to  himself  the  functions  of  the  law ;  no  man  has  the  right 
to  lynch  such  an  offender. 

The  problem  of  woman  and  the  problem  of  the  Jews  are 
absolutely  identical  with  the  problem  of  slavery,  and  they 
must  be  solved  in  the  same  way.  No  one  should  be  op- 
pressed, even  if  the  oppression  is  of  such  a  kind  as  to  be 
unfelt  as  such.  The  animals  about  a  house  are  not 
"  slaves,"  because  they  have  no  freedom  in  the  proper 
sense  of  the  word  which  could  be  taken  away. 

But  woman  has  a  faint  idea  of  her  incapacity,  a  last 
remnant,  however  weak,  of  the  free  intelligible  ego,  simply 
because  there   is   no   such   thing  as   an  absolute  woman. 


WOMAN  AND  MANKIND  339 

Women  are  human  beings,  and  must  be  treatea  as  such, 
even  if  they  themselves  do  not  wish  it.  Woman  and  man 
have  the  same  rights.  That  is  not  to  say  that  women  ought 
to  have  an  equal  share  in  political  affairs.  From  the 
utilitarian  standpoint  such  a  concession,  certainly  at  present 
and  probably  always,  would  be  most  undesirable  ;  in  New 
Zealand,  where,  on  ethical  principles,  women  have  been 
enfranchised,  the  worst  results  have  followed.  As  children, 
imbeciles  and  criminals  would  be  justly  prevented  from 
taking  any  part  in  public  affairs  even  if  they  were  numeri- 
cally equal  or  in  the  majority  ;  woman  must  in  the  same  way 
be  kept  from  having  a  share  in  anything  which  concerns 
the  public  welfare,  as  it  is  much  to  be  feared  that  the  mere 
effect  of  female  influence  would  be  harmful.  Just  as  the 
results  of  science  do  not  depend  on  whether  all  men  accept 
them  or  not,  so  justice  and  injustice  can  be  dealt  out  to 
the  woman,  although  she  is  unable  to  distinguish  between 
them,  and  she  need  not  be  afraid  that  injury  will  be  done 
her,  as  justice  and  not  might  will  be  the  deciding  factor 
in  her  treatment.  But  justice  is  always  the  same  whether 
for  man  or  woman.  No  one  has  a  right  to  forbid  things 
to  a  woman  because  they  are  "  unwomanly "  ;  neither 
should  any  man  be  so  mean  as  to  talk  of  his  unfaithful 
wife's  doings  as  if  they  were  his  affair.  Woman  must  be 
looked  upon  as  an  individual  and  as  if  she  were  a  free 
individual,  not  as  one  of  a  species,  not  as  a  sort  of 
creation  from  the  various  wants  of  man's  nature ;  even 
though  woman  herself  may  never  prove  worthy  of  such  a 
lofty  view. 

Thus  this  book  may  be  considered  as  the  greatest  honour 
ever  paid  to  women.  Nothing  but  the  most  moral  relation 
towards  women  should  be  possible  for  men  ;  there  should 
be  neither  sexuality  nor  love,  for  both  make  woman  the 
means  to  an  end,  but  only  the  attempt  to  understand  her. 
Most  men  theoretically  respect  women,  but  practically 
they  thoroughly  despise  them  ;  according  to  my  ideas  this 
method  should  be  reversed.  It  is  impossible  to  think  highly 
pf   women,  but  it  does   not  follow  that  we  are  to  despise 


340  SEX  AND  CHARACTER 

them  for  ever.  It  is  unfortunate  that  so  many  great  ano 
famous  men  have  had  mean  views  on  this  point.  The  views 
of  Schopenhauer  and  Demosthenes  as  to  the  emancipation 
of  women  are  good  instances.     So  also  Goethe's 

Immer  is  so  das  Mädchen  beschäftigt  und  reifet  im  stillen 
Häuslicher  Tugend  entgegen,  den  klugen  Mann  zu  beglücken. 
Wünscht  sie  dann  endlich  zu  lesen,  so  wählt  sie  gewisslich  ein 
Kochbuch, 

is  scarcely  better  than  Moliere's 

.    .   .   Une  femme  en  sait  tonjours  assez, 
Quand  la  capacite  de  son  esprit  se  hausse 
A  connaitre  un  pourpoint  d'avec  un  haut  de  chausse. 

Men  will  have  to  overcome  their  dislike  for  masculine 
women,  for  that  is  no  more  than  a  mean  egoism.  If 
women  ever  become  masculine  by  becoming  logical  and 
ethical,  they  would  no  longer  be  such  good  material  for  man's 
projection  ;  but  that  is  not  a  sufficient  reason  for  the  present 
method  of  tying  woman  down  to  the  needs  of  her  husband 
and  children  and  forbidding  her  certain  things  because  they 
are  masculine. 

For  even  if  the  possibility  of  morality  is  incompatible 
with  the  idea  of  the  absolute  woman,  it  does  not  follow 
that  man  is  to  make  no  effort  to  save  the  average  woman 
from  further  deterioration  ;  much  less  is  he  to  help  to  keep 
woman  as  she  is.  In  every  living  woman  the  presence  of 
what  Kant  calls  "the  germ  of  good"  must  be  assumed  ;  it 
is  the  remnant  of  a  free  state  which  makes  it  possible  for 
Woman  to  have  a  dim  notion  of  her  destiny.  The  theo- 
retical possibility  of  grafting  much  more  on  this  "  germ 
of  good "  should  never  be  lost  sight  of,  even  although 
nothing  has  ever  been  done,  or  even  if  nothing  could  ever 
be  done  in  that  respect. 

The  basis  and  the  purpose  of  the  universe  is  the  good, 
and  the  whole  world  exists  under  a  moral  law  ;  even  to  the 
animals,  which  are  mere  phenomena,  we  assign  moral  values^ 
holding  the  elephant,  for   instance,  to  be  higher  than  the 


WOMAN  AND  MANKIND  341 

snake,  notwithstanding  the  fact  that  we  do  not  make  an 
animal  accountable  when  it  kills  another.  In  the  case  of 
woman,  however,  we  regard  her  as  responsible  if  she  com- 
mits murder,  and  in  this  alone  is  a  proof  that  women  are 
above  the  animals.  If  it  be  the  case  that  womanliness  is 
simply  immorality,  then  woman  must  cease  to  be  womanly 
and  try  to  be  manly. 

I  must  give  warning  against  the  danger  of  woman  trying 
merely  to  liken  herself  outwardly  to  man,  for  such  a  course 
would  simply  plunge  her  more  deeply  into  womanliness. 
It  is  only  too  likely  that  the  efforts  to  emancipate  women 
will  result  not  in  giving  her  real  freedom,  in  letting  her 
reach  free-will,  but  merely  in  enlarging  the  range  of  her 
caprices. 

It  seems  to  me  that  if  we  look  the  facts  of  the  case  in 
the  face  there  are  only  two  possible  courses  open  for 
women  :  either  to  pretend  to  accept  man's  ideas,  and  to 
think  that  they  believe  what  is  really  opposed  to  their 
whole,  unchanged  nature,  to  assume  a  horror  of  immorality 
(as  if  they  were  moral  themselves),  of  sexuality  (as  if  they 
desired  platonic  love) ;  or  to  openly  admit  that  they  are 
wrapped  up  in  husband  and  children,  without  bein.i^  con- 
scious of  all  that  such  an  admission  implies,  of  the  shame- 
lessness  and  self-immolation  of  it. 

Unconscious  hypocrisy,  or  cynical  identification  with 
their  natural  instincts  ;  nothing  else  seems  possible  for 
woman. 

But  it  is  neither  agreement  nor  disagreement  with,  but 
rather  the  denial  and  overcoming  of  her  womanishness 
that  a  woman  should  aim  at.  If  a  woman  really  were  to 
wish,  for  instance,  for  man's  chastity,  it  would  mean  that 
she  had  conquered  the  woman  in  her,  it  would  mean  that 
pairing  was  no  longer  of  supreme  importance  to  her  and 
that  her  aim  was  no  longer  to  further  it.  But  here  is 
the  trouble  :  such  pretensions  must  not  be  accepted  as 
genuine,  even  although  here  and  there  they  are  actually 
put  forward.  For  a  woman  who  longed  for  man's  purity 
is,  apart  from  her  hysteria,  so  stupid  and  so  incapable  of 


342  SEX  AND  CHARACTER 

truthfulness  that  she  is  unable  to  perceive  that  she  is  in  this 
way  negating  herself,  making  herself  absolutely  worthless, 
without  existence  ! 

It  is  difficult  to  decide  which  is  preferable  :  the  unlimited 
hypocrisy  which  can  appropriate  the  thing  that  is  most 
foreign  to  it,  i.e.,  the  ascetic  ideal,  or  the  ingenuous  admira- 
tion for  the  reformed  rake,  the  complacent  devotion  to  him. 
The  principal  problem  of  the  woman  question  lies  in  the 
fact  that  in  each  case  woman's  one  desire  is  to  put  all 
responsibility  on  man,  and  in  this  it  is  identical  with  the 
problem  of  mankind. 

Friedrich  Nietzsche  says  in  one  of  his  books  :  "  To 
underestimate  the  real  difficulties  of  the  man  and  woman 
problem,  to  fail  to  admit  the  abysmal  antagonism  and  the 
inevitable  nature  of  the  constant  strain  between  the  two,  to 
dream  of  equal  rights,  education,  responsibilities  and  duties, 
is  the  mark  of  the  superficial  observer,  and  any  thinker  who 
has  been  found  shallow  in  these  difficult  places — shallow  by 
nature — should  be  looked  upon  as  untrustworthy,  as  a 
useless  and  treacherous  guide  ;  he  will,  no  doubt,  be  one  of 
those  who  'briefly  deal  with'  all  the  real  problems  of  life, 
death  and  eternity — who  never  gets  to  the  bottom  of  things. 
But  the  man  who  is  not  superficial,  who  has  depth  of 
thought  as  well  as  of  purpose,  the  depth  which  not  only 
makes  him  desire  right  but  endows  him  with  determination 
and  strength  to  do  right,  must  always  look  on  woman  from 
the  oriental  standpoint : — as  a  possession,  as  private  property, 
as  something  born  to  serve  and  be  dependent  on  him — he 
must  see  the  marvellous  reasonableness  of  the  Asiatic  instinct 
of  superiority  over  women,  as  the  Greeks  of  old  saw  it, 
those  worthy  successors  and  disciples  of  the  Eastern  school. 
It  was  an  attitude  towards  woman  which,  as  is  well  known, 
from  Homer's  time  till  that  of  Pericles,  grew  with  the 
growth  of  culture,  and  increased  in  strength  step  by  step, 
and  gradually  became  quite  oriental.  What  a  necessary, 
logical,  desirable  growth  for  mankind  !  if  we  could  only 
attain  to  it  ourselves  ! " 

The  great  individualist  is  here  thinking  in  the  terms  of 


WOMAN  AND  MANKIND  343 

social  ethics,  and  the  autonomy  of  his  moral  doctrine  is  over- 
shadowed by  the  ideas  of  caste,  groups,  and  divisions. 
And  so,  for  the  benefit  of  society,  to  preserve  the  place  of 
men,  he  would  place  woman  in  subjection,  so  that  the 
voice  of  the  wish  for  emancipation  could  no  longer  be 
heard,  and  so  that  we  might  be  freed  from  the  false  and 
foolish  cry  of  the  existing  advocates  of  women's  rights,  ad- 
vocates who  have  no  suspicion  of  the  real  source  of  woman 
bondage.  But  I  quoted  Nietzsche,  not  to  convict  him  of 
want  of  logic,  but  to  lead  to  the  point  that  the  solution  of 
the  problem  of  humanity  is  bound  up  with  the  solution  of 
the  woman  problem.  If  any  one  should  think  it  a  high- 
flown  idea  that  man  should  respect  woman  as  an  entity,  a 
real  existence,  and  not  use  her  merely  as  a  means  to  an 
end,  that  he  should  recognise  in  her  the  same  rights  and 
the  same  duties  (those  of  building  up  one's  own  moral 
personality)  as  his  own,  then  he  must  reflect  that  man 
cannot  solve  the  ethical  problem  in  his  own  case,  if  he 
continues  to  lower  the  idea  of  humanity  in  the  women  by 
using  her  simply  for  his  own  purposes. 

Coitus  is  the  price  man  has  to  pay  to  women,  undei  the 
Asiatic  system,  for  their  oppression.  And  although  it  is  true 
that  women  may  be  more  than  content  with  such  recom- 
pence  for  the  worst  form  of  slavery,  man  has  no  right  to 
take  part  in  such  conduct,  simply  because  he  also  is  morally 
damaged  by  it. 

Even  technically  the  problem  of  humanity  is  not  soluble 
for  man  alone  ;  he  has  to  consider  woman  even  if  he  only 
wishes  to  redeem  himself  ;  he  must  endeavour  to  get  her  to 
abandon  her  immoral  designs  on  him.  Women  must  really 
and  truly  and  spontaneously  relinquish  coitus.  That  un- 
doubtedly means  that  woman,  as  woman,  must  disappear, 
and  until  that  has  come  to  pass  there  is  no  possibility  of 
establishing  the  kingdom  of  God  on  earth.  Pythagoras, 
Plato,  Christianity  (as  opposed  to  Judaism),  Tertullian, 
Swift,  Wagner,  Ibsen,  all  these  have  urged  the  freedom  of 
woman,  not  the  emancipation  of  woman  from  man,  but 
rather  the  emancipation  of  woman  from  herself. 


344  SEX  AND  CHARACTER 

It  is  easy  to  bear  Nietzsche's  anathema  in  such  company  ! 
But  it  is  very  hard  for  woman  to  reach  such  a  goal  by  her 
own  strength.  The  spark  in  her  is  so  flickering  that  it 
always  needs  the  fire  of  man  to  relight  it ;  she  must  have  an 
example  to  go  by.  Christ  is  an  example  ;  He  freed  the 
fallen  Magdalen,  He  swept  away  her  past  and  expiated  it  for 
her.  Wagner,  the  greatest  man  since  Christ's  time,  under- 
stood to  the  full  the  real  significance  of  that  act  :  until 
woman  ceases  to  exist  as  woman  for  man  she  cannot  cease 
being  woman.  Kundry  could  only  be  released  from 
Klingsor's  curse  by  the  help  of  a  sinless,  immaculate  man — 
Parsifal.  This  shows  ^the  complete  harmony  between  the 
psychological  and  philosophical  deduction  which  is  dealt 
with  in  Wagner's  "  Parsifal,"  the  greatest  work  in  the  world's 
literature.  It  is  man's  sexuality  which  first  gives  woman 
existence  as  woman.  Woman  will  exist  as  long  as  man's 
guilt  is  inexpiated,  until  he  has  really  vanquished  his  own 
sexuality. 

It  is  only  in  this  way  that  the  eternal  opposition  to  all 
anti-feministic  tendencies  can  be  avoided  ;  the  view  that 
says,  since  woman  is  there,  being  what  she  is,  and  not  to 
be  altered,  man  must  endeavour  to  make  terms  with  her  ; 
it  is  useless  to  fight,  because  there  is  nothing  which  can  be 
exterminated.  But  it  has  been  shown  that  woman  is  nega- 
tive and  ceases  to  exist  the  moment  man  determines  to  be 
nothing  but  true  existence. 

That  which  must  be  fought  against  is  not  an  affair  of 
ever  unchangeable  existence  and  essence  :  it  is  something 
which  can  be  put  an  end  to,  and  which  ought  to  be  put  an 
end  to. 


This  is  the  way,  and  no  other,  to  solve  the  woman  ques- 
tion, and  this  comes  from  comprehending  it.  The  solution 
may  appear  impossible,  its  tone  exaggerated,  its  claims  over- 
stated, its  requirements  too  exacting.  Undoubtedly  there 
has  been  little  said  about  the  woman  question,  as  women 
talk  of  it ;  we  have  been  dealing  with  a  subject  on  which 


WOMAN  AND  MANKIND  345 

women  are  silent,  and  must  always  remain  silent — the 
bondage  which  sexuality  implies. 

This  woman  question  is  as  old  as  sex  itself,  and  as  young 
as  mankind.  And  the  answer  to  it  ?  Man  must  free  him- 
self of  sex,  for  in  that  way,  and  that  way  alone,  can  he  free 
woman.  In  his  purity,  not,  as  she  believes,  in  his  impurity, 
lies  her  salvation.  She  must  certainly  be  destroyed,  as 
woman  ;  but  only  to  be  raised  again  from  the  ashes — new, 
restored  to  youth — as  a  real  human  being. 

So  long  as  there  are  two  sexes  there  will  always  be  a 
woman  question,  just  as  there  will  be  the  problem  of  mankind. 
Christ  was  mindful  of  this  when,  according  to  the  account 
of  one  of  the  Fathers  of  the  Church — Clemens — He  talked 
with  Salome,  without  the  optimistic  palliation  of  the 
sex  which  St.  Paul  and  Luther  invented  later  :  death  will 
last  so  long  as  women  bring  forth,  and  truth  will  not 
prevail  until  the  two  become  one,  until  from  man  and 
woman  a  third  self,  neither  man  nor  woman,  is  evolved. 


Now  for  the  first  time,  looking  at  the  woman  question  as 
the  most  important  problem  of  mankind,  the  demand  for 
the  sexual  abstinence  on  the  part  of  both  sexes  is  put 
forward  with  good  reason.  To  seek  to  ground  this  claim, 
on  the  prejudicial  effects  on  the  health  following  sexual 
intercourse  would  be  absurd,  for  any  one  with  knowledge 
of  the  physical  frame  could  upset  such  a  theory  at  all 
points  ;  to  found  it  on  the  immorality  of  passion  would  also 
be  wrong,  because  that  would  introduce  a  heteronomous 
motive  into  ethics.  St.  Augustine,  however,  must  certainly 
have  been  aware,  when  he  advocated  chastity  for  all  man- 
kind, that  the  objection  raised  to  it  would  be  that  m  such  a 
case  the  whole  human  race  would  quickly  disappear  from 
the  face  of  the  earth. 

This  extraordmary  apprehension,  the  worst  part  of  which 
appears  to  be  the  thought  that  the  race  would  be  extermi- 
nated, shows  not  only  the  greatest  unbelief  in  individual 
immortality  and  eternal  life  for  moral  well-doers ;  it  is  not 


346  SEX  AND  CHARACTER 

only  most  irreligious,  but  it  proves  at  the  same  time  the 
cowardice  of  man  and  his  incapacity  to  live  an  individual 
life.  To  any  one  who  thinks  thus,  the  earth  can  only  mean 
the  turmoil  and  press  of  those  on  it ;  death  must  seem  less 
terrible  to  such  a  man  than  isolation.  If  the  immortal, 
moral  part  of  his  personality  were  really  vigorous,  he  would 
have  courage  to  look  this  result  in  the  face  ;  he  would 
not  fear  the  death  of  the  body,  nor  attempt  to  substitute 
the  miserable  certainty  of  the  continuation  of  the  race 
for  his  lack  of  faith  in  the  eternal  life  of  the  soul.  The 
rejection  of  sexuality  is  merely  the  death  of  the  physical 
life,  to  put  m  its  place  the  full  development  of  the  spiritual 
life. 

Hence  it  follows  that  it  cannot  be  a  moral  duty  to  provide 
for  the  continuance  of  the  race.  This  common  argument 
appears  to  me  to  be  so  extraordinarily  false  that  I  am 
almost  ashamed  to  meet  it.  Yet  at  the  risk  of  making 
myself  ridiculous  I  must  ask  if  any  one  ever  consummated 
coitus  to  avoid  the  great  danger  of  letting  the  human  race 
die  out,  if  he  failed  in  his  duty  ?  And  would  it  not  follow 
that  any  man  who  prefers  chastity  would  be  open  to  the 
charge  of  immoral  conduct  ?  Every  form  of  fecundity  is 
loathsome,  and  no  one  who  is  honest  with  himself  feels 
bound  to  provide  for  the  continuity  of  the  human  race. 
And  what  we  do  not  realise  to  be  a  duty,  is  not  a  duty. 

On  the  contrary,  it  is  immoral  to  procreate  a  human  being 
for  any  secondary  reason,  to  bring  a  being  into  the  limita- 
tions of  humanity,  the  conditions  made  for  him  by  his 
parentage  ;  the  fundamental  reason  why  the  possible  freedom 
and  spontaneity  of  a  human  being  is  limited  is  that  he  was 
begotten  in  such  an  immoral  fashion.  That  the  human  race 
should  persist  is  of  no  interest  whatever  to  reason  ;  he  who 
would  perpetuate  humanity  would  perpetuate  the  problem 
and  the  guilt,  the  only  problem  and  the  only  guilt.  The 
only  true  goal  is  divinity  and  the  union  of  humanity  with 
the  Godhead  ;  that  is  the  real  choice  between  good  and 
evil,  between  existence  and  negation.  The  moral  sanction 
that  has  been  invented  for  coitus,  in  supposing  that  there 


WOMAN  AND  MANKIND  347 

is  an  ideal  attitude  to  the  act  in  which  only  the  propagation 
of  the  race  is  thought  of,  is  no  sufficient  defence.  There  is 
no  such  imperative  in  the  mind  of  man  ;  it  is  merely  an 
ingenious  defence  of  a  desire,  and  there  is  the  fundamental 
immorality  in  it,  that  the  being  to  be  created  has  no  power 
of  choice  with  regard  to  his  parents.  As  for  the  sexual 
union  in  which  the  production  of  children  is  prevented, 
there  is  no  possible  justification. 

Sexual  union  has  no  place  in  the  idea  of  mankind,  not 
because  ascetism  is  a  duty,  but  because  in  it  woman  becomes 
the  object,  the  cause,  and  man  does  what  he  will  with  her, 
looks  upon  her  merely  as  a  "  thing,"  not  as  a  living  human 
being  with  an  inner,  psychic,  existence.  And  so  man 
despises  woman  the  moment  coitus  is  over,  and  the  woman 
knows  that  she  is  despised,  even  although  a  few  minutes 
before  she  thought  herself  adored. 

The  only  thing  to  be  respected  in  man  is  the  idea  of 
mankind ;  this  disparagement  of  woman  (and  himself),  in- 
duced by  coitus,  is  the  surest  proof  that  it  is  opposed  to  that 
idea  of  mankind.  Any  one  who  is  ignorant  of  what  this 
Kantian  "idea  of  mankind"  means,  may  perhaps  under- 
stand it  when  he  thinks  of  his  sisters,  his  mother,  his  female 
relatives ;  it  concerns  them  all :  for  our  own  sakes,  then, 
woman  ought  to  treated  as  human,  respected  and  not 
degraded,  all  sexuality  implying  degradation. 

But  man  can  only  respect  woman  when  she  herself  ceases 
to  wish  to  be  object  and  material  for  man  ;  if  there  is  any 
question  of  emancipation  it  should  be  the  emancipation  from 
the  prostitute  element.  It  has  never  until  now  been  made 
clear  where  the  bondage  of  woman  lies  ;  it  is  in  the  sove- 
reign, all  too  welcome  power  wielded  on  them  by  the 
Phallus.  Th  .;re  can  be  no  doubt  that  the  men  who  have 
really  desired  the  emancipation  of  women  are  the  men  who 
are  not  very  sexual,  who  have  no  great  craving  for  love, 
who  are  not  very  profound,  but  who  are  men  of  noble  and 
spiritual  minds.  I  am  not  going  to  try  to  palliate  the 
erotic  motives  of  man,  nor  to  represent  his  antipathy  to 
the  "  emancipated  woman  "  as  being  in  any  sense  less  than 


348  SEX  AND  CHARACTER 

it  is;  it  is  much  easier  to  go  with  the  majority,  than,  as 
Kant  did,  to  dimb,  painfully  and  slowly,  to  the  heights  of 
isolation. 

But  a  great  deal  of  what  is  taken  for  enmity  to  emanci- 
pation is  due  to  the  want  of  confidence  in  its  possibility. 
Man  does  not  really  want  woman  as  a  slave  :  he  is  usually 
only  too  anxious  for  a  companion.  The  education  which 
the  woman  of  the  present  day  receives  is  not  calculated 
to  fit  her  for  the  battle  against  her  real  bondage.  The  last 
resource  of  her  "  womanly "  teacher,  if  she  declines  to  do 
this  or  that,  is  to  say  that  no  man  will  have  her  unless  she 
does  it.  Women's  education  is  directed  solely  to  prepar- 
ing them  for  their  marriage,  the  happy  state  in  which 
they  are  to  find  their  crown.  Such  training  would  have 
little  effect  on  man,  but  it  serves  to  accentuate  woman's 
womanishness,  her  dependence,  and  her  servile  condition. 
The  education  of  woman  must  be  taken  out  of  the  hands 
of  woman  ;  the  education  of  mankind  must  be  taken  out 
of  the  hands  of  the  mother.  This  is  the  first  step  towards 
placing  woman  in  a  relation  to  the  idea  of  mankind,  which 
since  the  beginning  she  has  done  more  than  anything  else 
to  hinder. 


A  woman  who  had  really  given  up  her  sexual  self,  who 
wished  to  be  at  peace  would  be  no  longer  "  woman."  She 
would  have  ceased  to  be  "  woman,"  she  would  have  received 
the  inward  and  spiritual  sign  as  well  as  the  outward  form  of 
regeneration. 

Can  such  a  thing  be  ? 

There  is  no  absolute  woman,  but  even  so  to  say  "  yes  " 
to  the  above  question  is  like  giving  one's  assent  to  a  miracle. 
Emancipation  will  not  make  woman  happier  ;  it  will  not 
ensure  her  salvation,  and  it  is  a  long  road  which  leads  to 
God.  No  being  in  the  transition  stage  between  freedom 
and  slavery  can  be  happy.  But  will  woman  choose  to 
abandon  slavery  in  order  to  become  unhappy  ?  The 
question   is   not  merely   if   it   be  possible  for  woman  to 


WOMAN  AND  MANKIND  349 

become  moral.  It  is  this  :  is  it  possible  for  woman  really 
to  wish  to  realise  the  problem  of  existence,  the  conception 
of  guilt  ?  Can  she  really  desire  freedom  ?  This  can  happen 
only  by  her  being  penetrated  by  a^  ideal,  brought  to  the 
guiding  star.  It  can  happen  only  if  the  categorical  im- 
perative were  to  become  active  in  woman  ;  only  if  woman 
can  place  herself  in  relation  to  the  moral  idea,  the  idea  of 
humanity. 

In  that  way  only  can  there  be  an  emancipation  of  woman. 


INDEX 


Esthetics  and  Erotics,  Chap.  XL. 
\      236-251 

I  Affinity,  sexual,  compared  with  che- 
I      mical,  41 
\  Ahriman,  183 

Alcmaeon,  of  Kroton,  81 

Alexander  the  Great,  229 

Amphibia,  hermaphroditism,  22 

Anaesthesia,  sexual,  274 

Anatomical  distinctions  of  the  sexes, 3 

Anatomy,  as  guide  to  sexuality,  3,  4 

Animals,  women  and  the  sexual  union 
of,  257 

Angelo,  M.,  105 

Anti-Christ,  183 

Antisemitism,  303,  304,  312,  313 

Apprehension,  116 

Architecture,  119 

Aristotle,  18,  140,  187,  293 

Arrhenoplasm,  Chap.  II.,  11-25 

Aryans,  302 

Asceticism,  329,  336,  347 

Attraction,  between  the  sexes,  26,  27 

Autobiography,  122 

Avenarius,  31,  82,  94,  100,  128,  144, 
322 

Bach,  103,  323 

Bachelors,  and  women,  258 

Bacon,  182 

Bashkir tseff,  Marie,  69 

Bateson,  on  dimorphic  earwigs^  34 

Beatrice,  240,  336 

Beauty,  analysis  of,  240,  242 

Beethoven,  96,  112,  317 

Bentham,  176,  317 

Berkeley,  141,  317 

Bisexuality,  oscillations  in,  55 

Bischoff,  12,  217 

Bjornson,  108 

Blavatsky,  Mdme.,  68 

Blindness,  colour,  no 

Blood,  transfusion  of,  20 

Bölsche,  329 

Bonheur,  Rosa,  68 

Bonnet,  143 


Boys  and  girls,  education  of,  58 
Breeding,    application     of     laws  of 

sexual  attraction  to,  43 
Breuer,  on  hysteria,  265,  269,  270 
Bridgman,  Laura,  66 
Brünnhilde,  223 
Bruno,  141,  240,  316 
Büchner,  315 
Buddha,  325,  328 
Burchhardt,  72 
Burns,  Robert,  317 
Byron,  Lord,  236 

CiESAR,  134,  229,  230,  326 

Carlyle,  113,  136,  140,  175,  229,  307, 
317 

Castration,  effect  of,  18 

Catharsis,  269 

Catherine  II.  of  Russia,  66 

Catholic  vi^  w  of  marriage,  221 

Catholicism  and  women,  207 

Cattle,  homosexuality  in,  49 

Causality,  invented  by  man,  279 

Cells,  sexuality  of,  15,  17,  22,  23 

Ceres,  224 

Chamberlain  on  Jews,  312,  321,  323, 
328 
on  origin  of  Christianity,  328 

"Character"  of  Avenarius,  94,  95, 
96 

Characteriology,  Chap.  V.,  52-63 

Characters,  classification  of,  14 
secondary  sexual,  43 

Chastity,  331,  332,  334,  335,341,  346 

Chemistry,  Kepler's  esdmateof,  315 

Chemotropism,  39,  41 

Child,  relation  of  mother  and  prosti- 
tute to,  219 

Chinese,  187,  302 

Chivalry,  204 

Chopin,  67 

Christ,  313,  325,  329 

Christianity  and  Judaism,  325,  327, 
328 

Clairvoyance,  277 

Classification,  97 


352 


INDEX 


Clemens,  345 
Cleopatra,  230 
Coitus,  332,  337,  343 
Colour  blindness,  1 10 
Commerce,  and  Jews,  325 
Communism,  307 
Comparisons,  in  poetry,  118 
Compassion,  womanly,  197 
Compliments,  and  women,  203 
Comprehension,  power  of  by  genius, 

105 
Comte,  A.,  141,  204,  244 
Confucius,  328 
Consciousness,    male     and     female, 

Chap.  III.,  93-102 
Conventions,  women  and,  262,  263 
Conversion,  Jews  and,  323 
Copernicus,  140,  315 
Coquetry,  and  sexuality,  232 
Correlations,  importance  of,  61 
Cromwell,  229 

Crustacea,  hermaphroditism  in,  19 
Cuvier,  6i,  62,  315 
Cyrano  de  Bergerac,  211 

Danäe,  231 

Dante,  249,  299 

Darwin,  97,  130,  140,  217 
on  correlation,  61 
on  female  talent,  71 
on  heterostylism,  33,  34 
on  sexual  tastes  of  animals,  27 
on  union  of  those  akin,  44 

Da  Vinci,  97 

Death,  346 

Death,  consciousness  at,  128,  129 

De  Bergerac,  211 

Decalogue,  313 

Demeter,  224 

Demosthenes,  340 

Descartes,  149 

Determinants,  in  psychology,  81 

Determination  of  sex,  23 

De  Vries,  on  cell  characters,  16 

Dilthey.  82 

Dimorphism,  sexual,  6 

Divorce,  221 

Don  Juan,  90,  233.  299,  332,  335 

Doppelgänger,  210 

Drawing,  and  women,  120 

Dualism  of  the  world,  166 

Dürer,  322 

Eckhard,  313 
Education,  57 

of  the  race,  348 

of  women,  348 
Ego,  awakening  of,  164 
Ego,  conception  of.  Chap.  VII.,  153- 
162 


"  Elective  Afl&nities,"  69,  218 

"  Element  "  of  Avenarius,  94 

Eliot,  George,  67 

Emancipation  of  Women,  Chap.  VI., 

64-75.  338 
Embryoes,  sexual  differentiation  of,  5 
Emerson,  141,  230 
Empedocles,  172 
Emperors  and  genius,  139 
Empiricism,  and  English  philosophy, 

317 
English  philosophy,  153 
English  and  Jew  compared,  317,  319 
Erotics,   and   aesthetics.    Chap.    XL, 

236-251 
Eroticism  and  humour,  318 
Ethics,  and  Logic,  Chap.    VI.,  142- 

152,  Chap.  VIL,  153-162 
Euler,  315 
Euripides,  105,  187 
Exner,  98 

Faithfulness,  sexual,  220 

Falkenberg,    on   fertilisation  in  sea- 
weeds, 40 

Fall,  meaning  of,  283 

Familiarity,  quality  of,  144 

Family,  origin  of,  205 

amongst  the  Jews,  310 

Faraday,  315 

Fechner,  82,  292,  313,  322 

Female,  contrasted  with  male,  Chap. 
I.,  79-84 

F6t6,  on  sexual  inversion,  45 

Ferns,  sexual   attraction  caused  by 
malic  acid,  39 

FertiUty,  limited  in  prostitutes,  216 

Feuerbach, 141,  305 

Fichte,  140,  150,  307 

Fischart,  226 

Flowers,  heterostylous,  33,  34 

Forgetting,  analysis  of  process,  97 

Form,  matter  and  form,  293 

Formula,  of  sexual  attraction,  29,  37, 
38 
of  sexual  constitution,  8 

Fouqu^.  188 

Freelove,  221 

Freewill,  209 

Freud,  on  hysteria,  265-277 

Friendship,  49,  288 

Galileo,  140,  315 
Gall,  on  physiognomy,  59 
Gauss,  140 
Gaule,  12 

Genesis,  Book  of,  295 
Genital,  glands,  effect  of  transpUnta- 
tion,  21 


INDEX 


353 


Genius,  compared  with  talent,  Chap. 
IV.,  103-113 
and  the  Ego,  Chap.  VIII.,  163- 

185 
in  evohition  of  race,  137 
and  language,  137 
and  maleness,  113 
and  memory,  Chap.  V.,  114-141 
and  morality,  183 
and  time,  136 
summary  of,  169,  182,  183 
Germain,  Sophie,  194 
Girls  and  boys,  education  of,  58 
God,  Schopenhauer's  definition,  313 
Goethe,  40,  41,  43,  69,  97,  106,  107, 
120, 126,  174,  203,  218,  228, 313, 316, 
332,  340 
Gonochorism,  6,  73 
Grafting,  of  sexual  organs,  20 
Greeks  and  religion,  323 
Guilt,    hysterical    consciousness    of, 
275 

Meckel's  "gonochorism,"  6 

"  Hakon,"  King,  328 

Hamilton,  317 

Handel,  322 

Happiness,  impossibility  of,  285 

Hartley,  143,  317 

Hatred,  236 

Hauptmann,  276 

Havelock  Ellis,  11,  12 

Hebbel,  279 

Hegel,  155 

Heine,  316,  323 

Hellenbach,  287 

Helmholtz,  82,  97 

Henids,  99 

Herbart,  93,  94,  141,  246 

Hering.  143 

Hermaphroditism,  6,  7,  10,  13,  16, 19, 

"Hero-worship,     113 
Hertwig,  16 
Heterostylism,  33,  34 
Hildebrand,  on  heterostylism,  33 
Hobbes,  316,  317 
Homosexuality,  Chap.  IV.,  45-52 

of  famous  women,  66 
Horwicz,  93,  94 
Hume,  81,  141,  153,164,  175,  193,208, 

218,317 
Humour,  analysis  of,  318 
Hunter,  John,  14 
Hutcheson,  175 
Huxley,  193,  317 
Hydrocele.  25 
Hypnotism,  50 
Hypnotism  and  hysteria,  277 
Hysteria,  analysis  of,  265 


Ibsen,  160,  187,  218,  224,  231,  258, 

290,  325,  343 
Idealism,  176 
Idioplasm,  16,  21,  155 
Imagination,  of  women,  119 
Immortality,  127,  135,  314,  346 
"Impressions,"  maternal,  217 
Impulse,  sexual,  87,  88,  282 
Individualism,  176 
Individuality,  282 
Individuation,  282 
Infants,  sex  of,  23,  24 
Innocence,  243 
Intermediate  sexual  forms,  7 
Inversion,  sexual,  45 
Irony, 323 
Israels,  316 

James,  W.,  82,  144 

Janet,  on  hysteria,  265,  267,  268 

Jealousy,  and  women,  205,  289 

Jewish  race,  303 

Jews  and  English  compared,  319 

and  women  compared,  320 
Joshua,  328 
Judaism,  Chap.  XIII.,  301 — 330 

and  Christianity,  325 

and  the  Messiah,  329 

Kant,  42,  85,  105,  138,  150,  153,  158, 
15g,  161,  164,  192,  208,  237,  246, 
270.  313.  320,  331.  340 

Karneades,  141 

Karsch,  49 

Kaufmann,  119 

Kepler,  315 

Kleptomania,  205 

Kowalevsky,  Sonia,  67 

Kraepelin,  45 

Kundry,  270,  319,  337,  344 

' '  Lady  from  the  Sea, ' '  218 

Lamarck,  97,  143,  315 

Lange,  129,  208 

Language,  origin  of,  137 

Latin,  women  and,  89 

Lavater,  174 

Laws  against  homosexuality,  51 

of  sexual  attraction,  29 
Leda,  231,  291 
Leibnitz,  140,  171,  172,  316 
Lepage,  Bastien,  69 
Lewes,  317 

Liars,  and  memory,  145 
Libraries,  and  women,  206 
Lichtenberg,  153 
Linnsus,  140,  315 
Locke,  141,  317 

Logic  and  the  Ego,  Chap.  VII., 
153,  162 


354 


INDEX 


Logic  and  ethics,  Chap,  VII.,  153 — 162 
and    memory,  Chap.  VI.,   142 — 
152 

Lohengrin,  324 

Lombroso,  138 

Lotze,  125 

Love,  analysis  of,  236,  25 1 
maternal,  225 
and  sexuality,  239 

Luther,  325 

Luxemburg,  69 

Mach,  143,  154,  201,  208,  210,  322 

Madness,  and  genius,  183 

Madonna  worship,  249 

Maeterlinck,  108 

Mahomet,  187,  325 

Male  and  Female,  Chap.  I.,  79  —84 

minds,  284 

plasmas,  11 
Malic  acid  in  ferns,  39 
Marriage,  effect  on  progeny  of  love- 
less, 44 

ideas  of  boys  and  girls  on,  90 

religious,  221 
Marx,  307 

Marxism,  32g  ' 

Masculine  women,  2,  8,  17 
Match-making,  and  women,  252 — 300 

amongst  Jews,  311 
Materialism,  and  Jews,  314 
Matriarchy,  222 
Matter,  and  form,  293  ' 

and  woman,  292 
Maupas,  on  rotifers,  24 
Maupassant,  276 
Mayer,  97 

Medecine,  Jewish  influence  on,  315 
Medical  view  of  hysteria,  271 
"Meistersingers,"  305 
Memory,  282 

and  genius,  Chap.  V.,  114 — 141 

in  boys  and  girls,  294 

in  relation  to  logic,   Chap.  VI., 
T42— 152 
Messalina,  336 
Messiah,  325,  329 
Meta-organisma,  287 
Metaphysics,  Jews  and,  322 
Microcosm,  171 
Mill,  J.  S.,  176,  317 
Milne-Edwards,  291 
Mirandola,  188 
Modesty,  261,  274 

womanly,  200 
Moliere,  340 
Moll,  52.  88 

Monads,  198,  287,  294,  297 
Monogamy,  43,  220 
Morality,  176 


Morality  of  women,  196,  278,  340 

More,  73 

Morphology,  in  relation  to  character, 

Chap,  v.,  52 — 63 
Motherhood,  analysis  of.  Chap.  X., 

214—235 
Mozart,  323 
Müller,  Joh.,  217 
Murder,  109 
Music,  and  women,  118 
Myxodema,  25 

N^GELI,  16 

Names,  and  women,  206 

"  Nana,"  231 

Napoleon,  182,  228,  326,  327 

Newton,  140,  315 

New  Testament,  325 

New  Zealand,  339 

Nietzsche,    104,    108,   140,   167,  329, 

342. 344 
Nirvana,  174 
Nobility,  Jews  and,  308 
Nörgler,  174 
Novalis,  103,  165,  258 
Nudity,  240,  241 

Organotherapy,  21 

Oriental  view  of  women,  342 

Origen,  187 

Oscillations,  in  sexuality,  54 

Ostwald,  31,  315 

Ovid,  332 

Owen,  307 

Painting,  and  women,  120 
Pairing,  woman's  chief  instinct,  252— 
300 
and  Jews,  311 
"  Parsifal,"  305,  337,  344 
Pascal,  179,  205 
Pasiphäe,  291 
Pasteur,  315 
Paternity,  232,  346 
Pathology,  25 
Paul,  Jean,  103,  164,  318 
Pederasty,  Chap.  IV.,  45 — 52 
"  Peer  Gynt,"  224,  foot  note 
Periodicity,  of  genius,  107 
Personality,  multiple,  211,  267 
Persoon,  33 
Petzoldt,  96,  100 
Pfeffer,  39 
Phallus,   relation  of,  to  women,  298 

347 
Philosophy,  English,  153 
Philosophers,  and  genius,  141 
Physiognomy,  59,  60 
Piety,  322 
Pity,  199 


INDEX 


355 


[Plasmas,  male  and  female,  ii 
Plato,    149,    150,   240,  246,  293,  313, 

343 
Platonic  love,  239 
Pleasure,  282 

Politeness,  and  women,  203 
Politician,  character  of,  230 
Politicians  and  genius,  139 

and  value,  134 
Pollen,  in  heterostyllous  flowers,  35 
Polyandry,  222 
Polygamy,  220 
Pregnancy,  86,  222 
Pre-Raphaelites,  73 
Provost,  256 
Prey  er,  315 
j  Pride,  of  women,  201 
i  Property,  Jewish  relation  to,  306 
I  Prostitution,    analysis   of.  Chap.  X., 
I      214—235 

I  Protestantism,  and  women,  207 
;  Psychology,  142 

male    and   female.     Chap.    IX. , 
186 — 213 
Puberty,  effect  of,  90 
Pythagoras,  343 

Rabbis,  Jewish,  311 

Race,    persistence    of    human,    224, 

346 
Raphael,  226 
Recognition,  282 
Red  Sea,  crossing  of,  323 
Regeneration,  of  lost  parts,  16 

moral,  283 
Religion,  founders  of,  326,  327 

importance  of,  323 

Jews  and,  321 

women  and,  261 
Revenge,  289 
Reverence,  322 
Richepin,  226 
Rousseau,  307 
Rudiments,  of  embryonic  sexual 

organs,  3 
Ruskin,  307 

St.  Augustine,  345 
Salome,  345 
Samson,  328 
Sand,  George,  66 
Sappho,  65,  66 

Schelling,  81,  105,  138,  165,  246 
Schiller,  230,  246 
Schleiermacher,  140 
Schoolmasters,  and  types,  57 
Schopenhauer,  95,  167,  174,  199,  218, 
223,  236,  237,  238,  281,  295,  305, 

313.  318.  340 
Schrenk-Notzing,  45 


Schurtz,  205 

Schwammerdam,  315 

Science,  and  genius,  140 
Judaism,  in,  314 

Secretion,  internal,  and  sexual  cha- 
racters, 15 

Sellheim  and  Foges,  experiments  on 
castration,  18 

Servant,  type  of  woman,  272 

Sex,  appearance  of,  in  embryos,  5 
assignment  of,  to  infants,  22,  23, 

24 
Sexual  attraction,  laws  of.  Chap.  Ill,, 
26—44 
characters,  secondary,  14,  43 
impulses,  88 
Sexuality,  of  male  and  female  com- 
pared, 85,  92 
opposed  to  love,  239 
of  women,    260,   331,   332,    334, 

335 
Shaftesbury,  246 
Shakespeare,  105,  109,  no,  317 
Shelley,  168,  317 
Shrew,  type  of  woman,  272 
"  Siegfried,"  223,  305 
Sigwart,  156 
Simmel,  George,  148 
Slavery,  compared  with  Jewish  prob- 
lem, 338 
Smith,  Adam,  175,  317 
Socialism,  307 
Society,  origin  of,  205 
Socrates,  150,  246,  326 
Solidarity,  of  the  Jews,  310 
Solitude,  and  women,  205 
Solliers,  on  sexual  ansesthesia,  274 
Somerville,  Marj',  194 

Sophocles,  184 

Soul,  313 

denied  by  modern  science,  315 
and  great  men,  168 
and  modern  psychology,  209 
and  women,  187 

Spencer,  Herbert,   128,  130,  263,  317 

Spinoza,  316,  317 

Sprengel,  315 

State,  307 

Steenstrup,  12,  13 

Sterility,  216 

Stern,  L.  W..  82 

Stern,  317 

"  Stockman,  Dr.,"  325 

Strauss,  112 

Strindberg,  187 

Sudermann,  256 

Suggestibility,  of  women,  394 

Suicide,  of  women,  286 

Sulpicia,  319 

Superstition,  of  women,  127 


356 


INDEX 


Swift,  317.  343 
Sympathy,  177,  197 

"Tannhäüser,"  240,  305 

Telegony,  233 

Teresa,  St.,  277 

Tertullian,  187,  314,  343 

"Tesman,"  in  Hedda  Gabler,  258 

Thely plasm,  Chap.  IL,  11 — 25 

Time,  relation  to  value,  133 

Tolstoy,  231 

Touch,  sense  of,  in  women,  191 

Tragedy,  319 

Transcendentalism,  314 

Transfusion,  of  blood,  20 

Travel,  desire  of,  237,  note 

Truth,  150 

Türck,  138 

Tylor,  128 

Types,  male  and  female,  mental,  53 

Undine,  188 

Universality,  of  genius,  112 
Untruthfulness,  of  women,  266 

Value,  theory  of,  133 
Vanity,  of  women,  202 
Variation  in  sexual  characters,  18 
Virginity,  a  male  idea,  333 
woman's  attitude  to,  334 


Virtue  of  women,  333 

Vogt,  on  hysteria,  265, 274,  277 

Von  Eschenbach,  264 

Von  Höffding,  144 

Von  Humboldt.  140 

Von  Kleist,  105 

Von  Möbius,  59 

Wagner,  67,  109,  211,  240,  279,  305, 

319,  343 
Weill,  36 
Weismann,  81 
Wier,  81 
Will,  282 

Wit  and  humour,  318 
Woman  and  animals,  290,  291 

character  of,  280 

emancipated,  64 

famous,  69 

future  of.  Chap.  XIV.,  351-340 

compared  with  Jews,  320 

and  matter,  292 

sexuality  of,  260 

summary   of  her  nature,  Chap> 
XII.,  252-300 
Wundt,  94,  131,  140 

"  Zarathustra,"  108,  1Ö7 
Zionism,  307,  312 
'   Zola,  105,  231,  304 


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